When I first went to Campania in 2016 to report on the Land of Fires, I never imagined it would become my longest project. Focused on environmental pollution and its impact on local health, Terra Mala is now 8 years old and has expanded to include Sicily and Veneto. "Land of Fires" is an area where millions of toxic waste have been dumped over 25 years, still affecting soil, agriculture, and water. In 2016, the link between pollution and rising cancer rates was confirmed by the Italian Higher Institute of Health. My interest also grew in the pollution from the petrochemical complex on Sicily’s eastern coast, which has affected air, water, and both fish and people. A 2003-2015 study found more than 400 children with malformations. Lastly, in Veneto, the pollution caused by PFAS dumped into local water by Miteni Spa has harmed over 300,000 people. My photography aims to raise awareness, inspire change, and bring attention to environmental injustices people are often unaware of.

Leandra Van Zyl, a 27-year-old veterinarian from Namibia, collects biological samples from wildlife such as jackals, hyenas, zebras, hippos, and lions. If an animal shows signs of illness, she wears a hazmat suit to avoid contamination. When not in the field, she works at the Center Veterinary Laboratory (CVL) in Windhoek. Leandra trained under Umberto Molini, a veterinarian from the Teramo Zooprofilactic Research Institute (IZS), which collaborates with CVL to address exotic diseases in Namibia. Veterinarians and doctors play a crucial role in preventing pandemics, as 60% of human infectious diseases are zoonotic. Zoonotic diseases are accelerated by factors like global warming, deforestation, and intensive farming. Additionally, wildlife trade, like in Ghana, raises public health risks. This work documents the One Health approach, aimed at preventing future pandemics and safeguarding both human and animal health.

India is currently the world's third-largest energy consumer. A significant proportion of the production for internal energy needs comes from Jharia coal mines in Jharkhand state. Here, underground fires have been burning for more than a century. But in recent decades open-cast mining has also brought the flames to the surface with devastating consequences for the local population. Life expectancy of Jharia villagers is reduced by at least ten years. Airborne particulate matter (PM), largely associated with handling coal, exceeds India’s air quality standard. Pollutants in the air result in chronic respiratory diseases like bronchitis and asthma or pneumoconiosis, which is caused by the accumulation of fine dust particles in the lungs. Extensive and open cast mining has made Jharia an extremely dangerous place to live in.

I decided to work on the migrants issue because I felt I had to watch with my own eyes this historic event, to take part of it and to tell it through my photographs. The main idea was to show these people’s stories and emotions by catching specific moods, such as desperation, joy, satisfaction, and fear. The migrants’ journey, their passage, thousands of feet stepping along paths and railways; it all stays on the background. Through my eyes, that huge multitude turns out to be a gallery of faces, depicting a variety of personal feelings: a woman’s eyes among the crowd, the loving gesture of a father carrying his disabled son, or the endless cry of babies and children. I followed their route from Greece to Austria. My pictures want the spectator to move from the dimension of what seems to be an infinite and indefinite human flood to a more private dimension, where every single person is part of a wider tragedy.

At Rignano Garganico, near Foggia, south of Italy, in an isolated area, there is a ghetto that has become a village, with its restaurants, its bars. Seasonal workers, often immigrants without a residency permit, are recruited by African foremen who have absolute power and decide who works and who does not. They are the irregulars of the tomato industry. Rotten beams and old windows nailed between them held in the houses: cardboard walls and dirt floor, inside the old mattresses thrown to the ground and some blankets worn. There is no electricity or water, sewage system, or services. To wash you have to fill the tanks and heat the water in the pots. In summer the Ghetto is full of immigrants from all over Italy in search of work and the slums comes to accommodate over 1200 people. They open restaurants and bars of luck, small shops where you can buy items of basic necessities at low prices and shops to repair vehicles that serve to lead the workers to the fields. The Ghetto is divided by areas of origin: Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Guinea Conakry, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali and Benin. The African laborers who work in Puglia live in our country for years. In the North. They worked in Milan, Turin, Brescia, in factories and on construction sites.