Interview with Pierpaolo Mittica

The degradation report

Pierpaolo Mittica, born in Pordenone in 1971, is an internationally recognised Italian photographer and humanist. His reportages are tales of truth capable of taking us inside those events that have struck the world community to the heart. Through images, Mittica brings us to know realities so distant yet so close, and to understand the consequences of some of the greatest man-made disasters. Interviewing him was a unique opportunity for us to better understand the role of documentary photography and to reflect on issues that, today more than ever, are topical for human society.

How did you start your activity as a photojournalist? I started professionally in 1997 with my first reportage: the Balkan war. I left for Sarajevo to tell what was happening in the heart of Europe. I started because I needed to tell stories of injustice, abuse, I needed, as I still do today, to give a voice to those who do not have one. Who were your teachers? I have been fortunate to have had several great masters in my photographic life. The first was my uncle Alfredo Fasan, who introduced me to photography and gave me the first rudiments of technique and the darkroom. Then Giuliano Borghesan and great personalities of international photography that I had the good fortune to meet and with whom I formed a deep friendship, Charles-Henri Favrod, Naomi Rosenblum and my great teacher ever, Walter Rosenblum. Your reportages are under the banner of social denunciation, but what was the subject of your first photos as a beginner? I started with travel photography: I have always been passionate about travelling and discovering new cultures. Then, during a trip to Vietnam in 1994, there was my ‘change’. I was in Danang, a city in the middle of Vietnam, I went out to take pictures and headed to the suburbs. There I entered a slum, it was the first time I had seen something like that with my own eyes, directly. The living conditions of those people shocked me and, at that very moment, I realised that photography became important to tell their lives and not mine.   Your reportages are both in colour and black and white. On what motivations is this different choice of expression based? Although I was practically born with black and white and did black and white and darkroom for many years, in recent years I alternate between using black and white and colour. In my photographic philosophy it all depends on the importance of colour in the storytelling: if colour is fundamental and helps me to tell the story then I prefer it, if it just becomes a superfluous and distracting element then I opt for black and white. Usually the choice comes when I am in the field and realise the situation.

What is the real role of a photojournalist in society? The role of the photojournalist is that of a ‘messenger’, of an ‘informer’: all we do is bring a situation to the eyes of other people to try to inform and perhaps succeed in changing things. We are not here to change the world, this is usually the biggest mistake for those who approach this profession. We don’t change the world, we don’t have the power, but we do have a great responsibility, which is to inform, and as correctly as possible. Is the environmental degradation you show in your reportages also accompanied by human degradation? It is all interconnected, in recent years I have been doing a lot of research into environmental disasters and what man is doing to nature, because I believe it is the most serious emergency situation humanity is facing, and climate change, which is there for all to see, shows us this every day. But this destruction of the environment obviously goes hand in hand with the destruction of the human being who lives in it. In my works, I recount environmental and human degradation together.

You did a long reportage on Chernobyl and were the first photojournalist to enter the forbidden zone of Fukushima. How do you deal with fear and danger? If you do this job you do it out of a personal choice, out of a very strong motivation that drives you to do it, certainly not because it is a job like any other. This is to say that the motivation that leads us to do this job is so strong that it makes us overcome all the problems that we may encounter during our work (and which are many and often very difficult to deal with) and the fears themselves, which are lessened thanks to this very motivational drive. Your report on Chernobyl exposes the consequences of disasters due to human error in nuclear power plants. Do you think modern nuclear power plants are safe? It is often very dangerous to speak of human error, because these terms serve to ‘cover up’ human responsibility, shifting the blame for something to an ‘error’ and nothing more. The consequences and probability of nuclear accidents have been known since the beginning of the nuclear age, those who developed civil nuclear power did so only for military interests (production of atomic armaments) knowing full well what could happen and, therefore, what the possible consequences were. Consequently, I would not speak of human error, but of a crime against humanity with those responsible for it, first and foremost the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, together with all the states and heads of state who initiated the development of civil nuclear power. Modern’ nuclear power plants do not exist, the last ones built date back to the 1980s, the new ones under construction are already known to have the same criticalities, primarily because they are governed and controlled by man, and we know how fallible human beings are.

Do you think photography is the most suitable medium for social denunciation? It is definitely a very powerful medium, compared to writing, it is more immediate, writing requires the person to read the article and often people are “lazy” and don’t read, photography is there, you see it, if it is a “good” photograph it hits you and informs you right away. Compared to video in some ways it is more limiting, it does not tell everything like video, but it is often less “scattershot” in the sense that we often forget videos, while a “good photograph” eventually sticks in our memory.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version) In your reports there is a lot of closeness with “local” people. How do you approach them and how do you win their trust? This is the fundamental part of reportage: if you are not close to people you can never tell their story. The approach is simple: before I photograph, I talk to people a lot, I try to get to know them and get to know myself, I try to understand their lives in order to be able to tell them as best I can, respecting them deeply. Therefore, I often try to live their lives as they live their lives. To better understand what they feel. Your report on Thai ladyboys brings to the forefront a hot topic in Italy as well, namely, that of transgender people: ladyboys are much more accepted in society than Italian transsexuals, why do you think? It is a socio-cultural and religious issue. Both Thai social culture and their religion, Buddhism, are born with an imprint of extreme tolerance toward everything and everyone, and this is present in all levels of society, because culturally and religiously they are raised and educated that way.

You are an award-winning photographer with honorable mentions especially abroad. What are the limitations of Italian photojournalism? The limits, in Italy, are more about consideration of photography, cultural limits derived perhaps from the too much importance given to other art forms such as painting and sculpture compared to photography. Yet our whole daily world is made of photography: television is pure image, the photos we take even with a simple smartphone and then share in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram are images. Millions of images hit us every day without us realizing it and, most importantly, we do not realize whether an image is of quality or not. This is unfortunate because Italian photojournalists are among the best in the world. What advice would you reserve for young people today who want to take the same path as you? Having passion, believing in it, working hard, finding a teacher, following advice and always challenging yourself, continuously. What projects are you working on now? I am now working on two long-term projects, one titled “Chernobyl Stories” which chronicles what is happening inside and outside the exclusion zone 30 years after the nuclear disaster. The second project is titled “Living Toxic”: it is a project begun in 2011 that documents the most polluted areas of the world, where radioactivity, heavy metal contamination, toxic fumes and gases, and chemical pollution continue to destroy, day after day, the life of the ecosystem and the people who live there. It is a work that wants to tell how we are destroying the Earth, how people are forced to live in these environments that are prohibitive for human life. It is a work that wants to show what lies ahead if we do not start taking urgent steps to protect our environment.