ENTRY DESCRIPTION
This photo was taken during a tradition party inside the via Candoni Gypsies Camp in the suburbs of Rome. These guys who love boxing have built a small gym to train.This camp was first opened on October 2001 and at the beginning it housed 267 people, all belonging to the Rumanian ethnic community. In 2010, more than 1000 people lived there and apart from the Rumanian nomads, in time, a huge number of Bosnian nomads , mainly from former unauthorized gypsies camps, had increased its numbers. This turned the camp into a huge ghetto and dump in the open air. Moreover, the cohabitation of different ethnic groups and practicing different religions is certainly not a help to a peaceful cohabitation. The problem of the Gypsy camps is today much discussed and is the subject of many clashes even within the current Italian politics.

AUTHOR
Pietro Di Giambattista born in Pannarano (BN) in 1956 and he lives and works in Rome. After having studied technical studies he started a full-time classical guitar course and in 1991 he became a performer. He decided to give up the study of the guitar and dedicated himself to photography,devoting his attention mainly to landscapes and portraits.In 1992 he won the 1st prize in a national photography competition at Ercolano (Napoli). In 1997 he enrolled at a Photography Workshop in Toscana held by the famous English landscape photographer EddieEphraums. From that time onwards he started taking part into workshops that will determine his professional growth. He also had the chance to meet Paolo Pellegrin and Antonin Kratochvil.In the year 2000 he met Francesco Zizola in Massa Marittima at the Toscana Fotofestival and at the Polaroid workshop he met Maurizio Galimberti. He attended a workshop with Michael Ackerman and later with Yury Kozyrev in Rome. He also enrolled in some courses at the Permanent School of Photography "Graffiti" in Rome, directed by Gianni Pinnizzotto and also attended the start-up to the profession of photojournalism with Rolando Fava .In 2002 he sent a selection of portraits that are part of his work "Nomads" at the World Press Photo where he won the third prize in the Portraits category .In 2002 he won the 7th International photograph exhibition of Photography in Solighetto(Treviso),an award that allowed him to publish his first book "Nomads". Pietro di Giambattista has exhibited in several Italian cities and in Barcelona. He has received several honorable mentions in several competitions, was a finalist in the 2016 Photographers Forum Magazine's, first place in the 2016 ND AWARDS in the category Editorial - Daily Life. In 2017 he was third in the Libero Monochrome category at the Siena International Photography Awards.

back to gallery