THEIn light it is blinding and the heat gives no respite, while the wind whistles and lifts the earth arsa, the echo of the voices of women and children resonates inside and outside the houses. There is all this and much more in the images of Cinzia Canneri.
Observing them, one after the other, they make up a long story that invites us to enter the lives of the protagonists of Women’s Bodies As Battlefields (The bodies of women as battlefields).
The fate of Eritrean women
Almost ten years of work to follow the stories of Eritrean women through the main countries involved: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, but also Egypt and Italy. A project that the psychologist, who became a photographer out of passion, began almost by chance, entrusting the spark of curiosity the desire to investigate the corners of the world animated by unknown lives, often forgotten. The results of the World Press Photothe longest and most famous photographic competition in the context of the reportage.
The photos of Cinzia Canneri at the World Press Photo
Cinzia Canneri He won in the category for the long -term project. A recognition that confirms the value of deepening and empathy with the stories they deserve to be told. We reached it to get to know the genesis of this work and know if and how he transformed his life. We thought of finding it in his city, Follonica, in the province of Grosseto, however, as a good reporter as it is, has given us an appointment for a call since he is in Yerevan, Armenia, for a new, mysterious project.
Psychologist, educator and then photographs: how did it go?
I cannot define photography a conscious choice, mine was a real falling in love and, as such, he had moments of arrest and rethinking. I worked as an educator in a mental health day center, I had organized a photography course for patients. That day, completely casually, I put the eye in the sights of the camera to see what effect she did. I felt a blow to the heart and one in the stomach, in a moment it was as if I had always looked at the world like this.
How much has he transferred to his attitude as a psychologist in this new profession?
Both of these professions have in common the desire for the relationship: observe the other in a difficult situation, but you have a reciprocity with him as a human being to whom you must guarantee fundamental rights.
How did you reconcile the life as a reporter with the family and motherhood?
By force of things I have started to do this nomadic life late. Today I have two large daughters, one of 19 and the other of 22 years, but growing them was not easy: the family and above all the motherhood in our country are not reconciled with professional life, you have everything on the shoulders unless you have supports.
How was the project on Eritrean women who earned you many awards and now this prize?
In 2017 I wanted to start a project all of mine, immerse myself completely in a story. In those years many Eritrean migrants arrived in Italy, only men though. The absence of women had intrigued me. I knew they also ran away from the country and wondered what their journey was. I wanted to explore gender issues in areas marked by the Italian colonial heritage, where women suffered both colonial and patriarchal violence. I started investigating the reception centers in Italy, in Rome, and then directly in Ethiopia in the fields for refugees. Here I discovered that, although many wanted to escape, they had many hesitation: relatives sick to look after, children to the front and buried deaths to honor. So they didn’t go far.
© Cinzia Canneri, Association Camille Lepage Yohanna, 22 years old, rests next to her mother after the care received. The Eritrean police shot her and woke up in a hospital where she discovered that one of the kidneys had been removed. Photography is part of a project that documents the experiences of Eritrean women fleeing the country’s repressive government. Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, 31 October 2017. World Press Photo
Eritrea is one of the worst regimes in the world, considered the second dictatorship after North Korea. In fact, military service is indefinitely and also concerns women, who can be intended for remote areas even for thirty years. I wanted to follow those who flew and sought refuge in Ethiopia. Then, in 2020, following the invasion of the Tigray by the Ethiopian national defense force with the support of the Eritrean army – one of the largest in Africa – and the Amhara militias, I also expanded the investigation to the tigrine women who joined the Eritires in the escape from the north of Ethiopia to the refugee camps of Addis Abeba and Sudan. From the beginning of the conflict, it emerged that the Eritrean army used sexual violence as a weapon of war. The Eritree were punished to be fled, the tigrine returned to the extermination project, but all had the same fate. The violation of their rights has not been analyzed and even reported. The focus of my project was to tell these stories.
Has he succeeded in the intent?
I have reported many, but I often wondered if my work could really affect. Sometimes I felt inadequate, it seemed to me that my investigation wasn’t really helpful. I wanted and had to do something more. Thus, with some local organizations that unite Eritree and Italian we set up concrete projects: last year, for example, we opened a cafeteria in Addis Ababa whose proceeds would have supported two women victims of gender violence. Small actions, of course, but I understood that it is not enough to document, we must connect structurally to the problems of the place and sometimes make concrete actions. In addition, the project was supported by the Eritrean and Tigrine diaspora, including people and organizations engaged in the defense of human rights. From this joint effort a collective called Cross Looks (crossed looks) was born, for the search for a shared and intersectional narrative on gender issues, class, breed and all other forms of social inequality.
In these pages we see images of great intimacy and others of rebellious fury.
They both represent their life. The fury is there. When they train, as in the opening image of the service, they scream to encourage companions. Many enrolled because they felt more protected in the army than the villages in which they were raped. Often the youngest have never taken a rifle in hand and their military exercises look more like the game of blind fly than to war. If, on the other hand, I think of intimacy, I see Johanna, the subject of one of my first photographs, the one I am most tied to. They had shot them at the belly – this too is an action against women to prevent them from having children – and in the hospital, where they should have cured her, they removed a kidney. When I took this image she and her mother were in a magical moment of comfort and love. Today she lives in America and has had a daughter, I know she has a future and I am happy that my photography has not concluded the story.
She saw the pain of women in the refugee camps and those left in the villages.
They are two very different situations. At the beginning of the war, there was protection and food in the fields, and international aid also came. Then these places also became military goals and have undergone many attacks. Conversely, in Eritrea there is a repression that you do not see: you cannot connect to the internet, the movements are controlled, the prisons are underground and you don’t see anything. It is very distressing, but however terrible life in the fields or dictatorship is, these women have an extraordinary ability to be connected to their purest feelings: they suffer and suffer atrocious things, yet they know how to experience the most authentic happiness.
Now that he has started a new project, will he abandon Eritrean women?
The awards, including this last important prize, have exposed me media and therefore today in some contexts I feel more vulnerable. Working in Eritrea is practically impossible and even in Ethiopia it is not easy. I think I need a break. I am facing this new adventure in Armenia and I must confess that to leave I prepared myself as if I went to Africa, clothes and equipment, but obviously here it didn’t need it at all. After so many years, I feel the disorientation of being in a new land, with a new language, climate, food and habits. And I have the happy awareness that I no longer want to be the photographer of Eritrean women, but a friend of them, a guest of their wonderful community.
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