"The Photographs I Love" 12 — Francesco Zizola

Francesco Zizola. Chiang Mai, Thailand, 1996

“Each story requires a grammatical development but also an emotional development, to prevent it from becoming sterile: This is also true in photography.”
(Franscesco Zizola)

Let's go back to Italy, precisely to Rome, my city, where the next photographer I want to talk to you about was born: Francesco Zizola, born in 1962. An anthropology student, he received ten World Press Photo awards, plus a World Press Photo of the Year in 1997, thanks to his reportage in mine-ravaged Angola.

I am particularly fond of one of his books, that “Born Somewhere” published in 2004 because it was one of the very first photographic books I bought when I started to be passionate about photography. After McCurry's bright colors and exotic countries, I came across this book of deep black and white, with raw and emotionally violent photos. I bought it and looked at it dozens and dozens of times, reading all the stories behind every single photograph.

 

Francesco Zizola

It's a book about childhood, but not the usual one. It’s about violated childhood, in every way that can come to mind.  Zizola has spent over ten years – from 1991 to 2004, more precisely – traveling to nearly twenty countries to document the difficult life of children: China, Somalia, Bangladesh. Iraq, Thailand, Indonesia, Libya, Kosovo, Brazil... Children are imprisoned, abandoned on the street, used as a business, abused, or used as a pure source of pride by their parents.

As Caroline Milic writes in the introduction to the book:

“The purpose of this survey of misery and the miseries of childhood is not to brandish the now worm out the notion of human rights, put forward more often than not in a vain attempt to support everything and anything. It mainly confronts us with our contradictions, the contradictions of westerners who tend to see childhood as a state of grace and purity and just shut their eyes. Most of all he represents our guilty conscience, guilty for ignoring both the neglect and the violence these children suffer.”

 

Francesco Zizola. Kuito, Angola, 1996

In short, not an easy book. But, for me who has always loved photographing children, it was a must.

Not only that, but this book has become intertwined with my personal life in recent years; I owe him a lot. Because the photo that struck me most I have shown and told many times, during my courses, from Italy to Indonesia.

Then, in 2017, during a month-long tour with my photography workshops in different regions of Malaysia, I was invited to give a short talk on the power of photography as non-verbal communication at USM University in Penang, in front of the Rector and the entire university Senate and the Penerbit USM publishing house. I showed a dozen pictures, telling the story behind each of them: the only photograph which is not mine was this of Zizola.

The presentation was so powerful that during the lunch I was seated at the table of the Rector and the editors, and I was asked to work for a year on the realization of the photographic book for the fiftieth anniversary of the University. 

I accepted immediately, and the following year my life changed. As I have written elsewhere, I have lived in Malaysia for almost two years and I miss it every day.

 

Francesco Zizola. Tokyo, Japan, 1999

Even during that long period, I haven't stopped telling this story. I think there will be many of you who now know it by heart.

It's a photograph that in my class on the Masters of Photography, divided by categories, represented the Storytelling, and usually also followed a brief reference to some basic rules on photography.

The one linked to it was the precaution of never cutting off hands or feet when photographing people.

So many times I have been angry to see photographs with people with fingers or feet amputated by hasty shots when many times it is just a question of taking a step back.

Therefore, when I then showed this photograph, everyone looked at me with questioning, if not sulky, eyes.

“But why? For a stubbed finger, you hit our hands, and this guy cuts heads in half and even wins prizes?” Students' voice of truth.

Well, here the story begins.

The first and most important thing to say is that in the book there are 172 photographs, and in each of them a child is portrayed. This is the only photograph in which there are no children.

So let's read the photograph, before knowing the story that Zizola tells us in the caption. There are two figures of old people, in total darkness, with a black that seems to stain the fingers, a frame hanging in the middle.

“Then? What else is there?”

“A door...”

“Look at the photo! What else is there?”

“A TV”

Good...

The old lady has a heavy, wrinkled face. The bodies are both stiff, certainly not comfortable being photographed.

But why is there no child? 

Where we are?

Chiang Mai, Thailand.

There is no need to open a discussion here on prejudices and clichés.

Thailand is one of the world-renowned sex tourism destinations. Nobody can deny it, although I deeply love the cultural and artistic history of this country.

So what does reading the photograph have to do with the absence of children in the photo and the technical error of cutting off the man's head? That an award-winning photographer who has been in photojournalism for decades can't take a picture?

Let's read Zizola's caption:

“This couple sold their grandchild and bought a television set with the money they received. The poor northern part of the country relinquishes its children to the country's thriving sex industry, where unscrupulous middlemen either kidnap or trick families into selling their children into the sex trade.”

 

And here a sudden chill descended. All silent people observe the photograph as one observes an evil northern light.

That's why there's no childhood presence, because she's been traded for a new TV.

Imagine the reporter listening to this story from the two elders, with blood burning in his veins, temples throbbing, he would get up and kick that damn TV, smash it into a thousand pieces.

But a photographer represents reality, he listens to it and tells it, he cannot intervene except with his eyes. So that the whole world knows.

 

But a photographer has a powerful weapon, it's not the last word. He has his own camera. Which is itself also a word, judgment, fist, and blade.

So what kind of man are you selling your niece to buy a television? Are we still talking about human beings?

Well, then there is the new television in my image, but not your face. I cut it for you... I deprive you of your identity because you yourself have sold your dignity.

 

We are no longer talking about the rules of composition, but about moral judgment. No one will ever know your face. Not out of shame and protection of privacy. But because you are not worthy of being seen, of being in the “frame” of my story. Of my portion of the world.

This will not stop the sex trafficking nor will it free that poor little girl from who knows what brothel, but at least it will have compensated for the impossibility of breaking that television.

There is no neutral photography. We are always in our photographs, with our thinking and our scale of values. It's not always easy to make it readable. Only great photographers succeed in this.

 

That's why this is one of the photographs I love most.

 

Francesco Zizola. Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, 1993

READ ALSO:

• “The Photographs I Love” 10 – Henri Cartier-Bresson 
• “The Photographs I Love" 11 – Jodi Cobb 

Francesco Zizola Website: https://www.noorimages.com/francesco-zizola
Francesco Zizola: “Born Somewhere” (Delpire, 2004)

Italian version