Fabio Ponzio

Fabio Ponzio was born in Milan in 1959. His interest in photography began in 1976, during a trip to the Balkans. Europe, travel, photography, were to form the three main threads of life in the years to come. In 1977 he made his first photographic journey across northern Europe, travelling on a scooter. Between 1978 and 1980 Ponzio continued his travels in Germany and Great Britain. He worked for the Italian and international press from 1980 to 1987, and also co-founded two photojournalism agencies. In 1987, returning from a trip to Istanbul, he made the decision to embark on a lengthy photographic project in search of the other Europe, eastern Europe. He set out on a series of journeys to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, the Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Yugoslavia and Albania. In 1989 he was in the East to document the fall of the communist regimes. In 1991 he received the "European Kodak Award of Photography", Arles (France), in 1993 the "Mother Jones Foundation Award for documentary Photography", San Francisco (CA, United States), and in 1998 the "Leica Oskar Barnack Award", Arles (France). Year after year, from 1987 to 2009, Ponzio returned to eastern Europe, searching out and capturing the many faces and stark differences of the other Europe, in search of the elements that make up the shared destiny of the peoples of eastern Europe. In 2003 he travelled to Georgia with his friend, the writer Rocco Carbone. Thus began a series of trips to the southern Caucasus. In the rough and desolate lands of Georgia and Armenia he encountered the furthest reaches of the European continent, where the ideals, traditions and aesthetic codes of Europe meet and merge with those of Asia. In 2007 he was commissioned by MAXXI (Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo) in Rome to document the Italian landscape. This project gave rise to a series of travels in Western Europe in 2008, in search of the identity of a new continent. Forty years after making his first trip in 1977, Ponzio visited and documented a considerably changed Europe; a continent that has become secularized, commercialised and standardised. In 2020, "East of Nowhere", synthesis of twenty-two years of work, was published by Thames & Hudson in the UK and the United States and in 2021, by Actes Sud, in France, with the title " A l'Est de Nulle Part". The preface is written by Romanian-born German novelist Herta Müller,recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. https://www.fabioponzio.com/ Text: Fabio Ponzio Audio: Ken Hunter (IA) + info www.audiotecafotografica.com