He became famous for his book, Children of Bombay, which he published in 1994. For Dario Mitidieri, an Italian photographer residing in London, this project was a breakthrough in his long career. It led to new chances for the future of his concerned photojournalistic work. Recently, Mitidieri gained international recognition for his very emotive project, Lost Family Portraits, a project about broken families of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

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The project, Children of Bombay, was born out of a series of events. According to the story narrated, Mitidieri was in Mumbai for an assignment for a German magazine. While walking through the streets of Mumbai, he noticed that there were street children everywhere. This made him wonder why there still was no big story about them. "This was such an incredible story that had to be told. I knew the film Salaam Bombay, which was successful at that time. I got to meet some of the people who worked with the film, and they gave me insight in the theme of street children.
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Once back in the UK, I applied for the W. Eugene Smith Grant, and to my surprise, I got the grant in 1991. That was a big thing. It is the most prestigious grant in the field of photojournalism. People like Sebastiāo Salgado and Gilles Peress were before me."

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Mutual respect

Dario Mitidieri made four different trips to India, each trip led to him adding more topics to the story. Altogether, it took him a year to completely accomplish the project. He managed to come very close to the kids without interfering in their lives and creating a natural close feeling to the spectator of his photographs. "After a while, they completely forgot about me. I knew there were some places where they would group, which was normally around railway stations or in the red light area of Bombay. So, there were certain areas where I knew I would meet them. So, I would just go there, bump in with some kids and then just follow them around. Whatever they were doing didn't matter to me. Just followed them around and see where the day took me in the evening. In the evening, I took them to a nearby restaurant on the payment and bought food for everyone."
In the course of the project, Mitidieri built a strong bond of trust with the unfortunate children. This trust created a sphere in which they would not pose for the camera. "We had mutual respect. They opened all those doors for me because they trusted me. I was one of them."
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Six languages

It was hard for Mitidieri to get the work published in a book. "It is not a mainstream story. So, I contacted Aperture and Phaidon, but they said: “great work, but thanks, we don't publish it." After winning the Visa d'Or, the story got published in many magazines. Finally, the project was turned into a book on a massive scale in the field of photography. Mitidieri won the European Publisher Award for Photography, which six different publishers organized in Europe. The book was printed in six different languages. There must have been thousands of copies of the book published both in hardcover and softcover. "On top of that, I got a surprise from Leica. They offered me a brand new Leica M6 with my name engraved on it, but I never used the camera."

The book, Children of Bombay, still resonates in the world of photography. "I was in Verona, Italy, three weeks ago and the run of my Bombay exhibition.” But the Bombay project was, of course, not the only project Mitidieri did. He has photographed mass graves in Iraq, funeral traditions in Haiti, covered the funeral of Pope Johannes in the Vatican, the oldest Maasai in Kenya, and the demonstration of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. He has won the World Press Photo twice. "The work which defines me as a photographer worldwide is definitely Bombay."
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Lost Family Portraits

In 2016, Dario Mitidieri did a remarkable project called Lost Family Portraits of broken families of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. On the staged photographs, you see family members against a black backdrop like in a studio, while in the background, you can see the actual location, which is the refugee camps in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. The approach used in this series is quite different from his other photojournalistic work. "This work had been done for an NGO, called Cafod, the Catholic International Development Charity. It was actually commissioned by an advertising agency. They knew my editorial work, and they wanted a natural reportage approach instead of a commercial approach. We wanted to make something appealing. We threw a lot of ideas on the table. It was in a time when the newspapers were statured with stories about refugees. How can we do a communication campaign for an NGO about refugees and get people's attention at a time where nobody wants to hear about it anymore? So I came up with the idea to make a studio setting, including the factual background being the border between Lebanon and Syria."
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Empty chairs

The striking point of the family portraits is the empty chairs in it, referring to the lost family members, either dead or unable to locate. This salient detail gives the photographs the emotional strength that makes them outstanding and brings the story in an appealing visual form. "The people were very willing to tell their heartbreaking stories.
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Despite their traumas, many families came forward and agreed to be photographed. They told us that they didn't want to be forgotten. They want their stories to be heard." The project was well organized. When Dario Mitidieri and his team arrived, twelve families had been selected. The team did the whole campaign in several days, in two different camps. "I hired a small production crew in Beirut, from where we transported the chairs."
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Let's go

The project became a huge success. It was an item on CNN and many other channels. The project got more than 700 million impressions, and there was an extensive exhibition in Germany in the summer of 2021. "Remember that it was never meant as a fundraising campaign because Cafod has enough funds. It was an awareness project, and as such, it was very instrumental. What bothers me is that there is a lack of other possible projects like this. If you calculate, it could be enormously effective. You spend a sum of € 20,000, and you raise a sum of maybe € 500,000. I wished I could do much more of these projects. Let's go to Jordan. Let's go to Turkey. Let's photograph these families with different backgrounds. Imagine a shoot in Sicily with the sea in the background, where they are arriving. Imagine in Germany, where the families have settled. I can see a book and an exhibition. The problem is with NGOs; they don't see the results."
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No money anymore

Mitidieri faces, like many other photojournalists, the challenge of the financial part of the job. "All my important stories were self-initiated. I went on my own with my own money. And that's what made the difference in my career. If I had to rely on other people to commission my work, I would have never done anything. I learned the hard way."

For photographers, these times are more complicated than in the 1990s. "Things have changed dramatically. There's no money anymore. Who can give you the funds to spend six months around the UK photographing teenage pregnancy? You can't fight that system anymore because if you do fight the system, you are left behind. Until 15 years ago, my work was entirely editorial, and I was making a very comfortable living. I was working for newspapers and magazines, constantly on the move, jumping on planes and making self-assigned stories. And I never lost money. Now all that is different. An old client recently assigned me to do a story in a dangerous African region for less than the fee in the 1990s. I almost wanted to hide in a hole."

Best known for his Black and White reportage work, Italian born Dario Mitidieri began his photographic career in London in 1987 for The Sunday Telegraph and, since its launch, for The Independent where its revolutionary high quality use of Black and White photography was unprecedented for a newspaper and provided Mitidieri with a wonderful opportunity to showcase his work.
In May 1989, Dario travelled to China to document the peaceful demonstration of students in Tiananmen Square who were demanding democratic reforms, little knowing that a few days later he would photograph one of the most brutal army repressions in modern history. For his work he was awarded British Press Photographer of the Year, and was recognised worldwide as one of the top emerging photojournalists.
In 1994 his book Children of Bombay was published in six languages, the result of a year long project about the lives of street children in Bombay. In the years that followed Dario photographed some of the most significant events in recent times, including the Kobe Earthquake in Japan, Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna’s last race, the conflict in Northern Ireland, the Iraq War, the Tsunami in Indonesia and was able to work on other long term projects such as Children in Wars, Charismatic Evangelism across the world, Hedonism in Ibiza and Teenage Pregnancy in the UK. His latest project, Lost Family Portraits, has received critical acclaim and used extensively both on printed and social media worldwide.

www.mitidieri.com

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