SIDE EFFECTS
© photos and text by Livio Senigalliesi

How to tell about the war? How to describe the conflicts of yesterday and today, where not only the soldiers die but above all the civilians, the defenseless, the innocent?

When the grudges of the past add up to those of the present, when economic and political injustices merge with ethnic, religious, tribal hatreds or with the interests of multinationals, the reasons for the conflicts become similar to inextricable skeins that are lost between errors and horrors of both.

In all this, the media also has a serious responsibility. For years, televisions and newspapers have misinformed and plagiarized us making digestible "humanitarian wars" and smart bombs digestible. To control the masses, the collective imagination must be normalizing, reassuring. Unique thought triumphs. The truth hurts.
In the age of "embedded" journalism, massacres of civilians have become "side effects". (left image: Bosnia-Srebrenica 1996)

In this world that runs fast without critically investigating the facts, I have chosen to travel in an obstinate and contrary direction. The images of this exhibition, taken over three decades on 4 continents, are an act of denunciation.
They are true images and therefore "uncomfortable" because they want to nourish in us the memory and a critical conscience against the war.

I've been lucky in my professional life! I was always in the right place at the right time. In Berlin in November 1989 as in Moscow in August 1991. When the "Cold War" ended I was in the front row and I was able to document all aspects by working in assignments for the most prestigious newspapers. Then came the real war, the one full of blood, fear, screams, corpses and refugees fleeing. For 30 years I lived between life and death and I was lucky because I am here to tell. But the wounds in the heart and mind are terrible. I suffer from a serious post traumatic syndrome and my nights are not peaceful. But, anyway, this has been a life I have lived through.

My photographs were taken up close, being in the midst of people who suffer, sharing the dangers, the cold, the hunger, following the same escape routes, consuming the soles of the shoes according to the rules of good journalism, returning to the same places for years to document the changes or to collect survivors' stories.

My work has taken me to all hotspots like Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Caucasus, Cambodia, Congo, Palestine, Kashmir, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Rwanda, Bosnia, Uganda, Guatemala, Mozambique and Vietnam 40 years after the end of the war. Dramatic photographs that throw the consequences of the chemical war on us.

The video on the Congo was shot in a truly remote, unreachable place, where a bloody war takes place fueled by the interests of the multinationals of telephony and electronics. A damned war that will never end stimulated by our needs. A holocaust which takes place away from our eyes and which also involves thousands of child soldiers. Where the rape of women and girls becomes an ignoble war weapon.

In this series of long reports you will also find a page dedicated to the tragedy of forced migration. It is a focal theme of our day which is closely linked to war and social inequalities between the north and south of the world.
To carry out all these "trips to hell" I received a great deal of help from local guides and interpreters to whom all my gratitude goes. To all these topics, I recently dedicated a memoir that has become a powerful teaching tool, adopted in schools and universities as a textbook. (above image: Kosovo, 1998)

"Memories of a war reporter" is a book distributed via the web by Blurb.it
https://www.blurb.com/b/10004562-memories-of-a-war-reporter
Due to the facts and names reported, this book was acquired by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (TPIJ).

Thanks for your attention. Take care of you and stay human. Yours Livio