Festival of Ethical Photography

Over twenty exhibitions to tell the story of the world we live in.A great photographic fresco created by the best photojournalists will accompany you through cloisters, parks, museums and squares.Join the Festival in Lodi from September 23 to October 24, 2022!

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The Festival of Ethical Photography was born in 2010 from an idea of the nonprofit organization Gruppo Fotografico Progetto Immagine, based in Lodi, Italy, with the intention of focusing on ethical content of great relevance, bringing the general public closer to social issues.

We believe photography is a vital tool in communicating the reality of social injustice around the world and we want to emphasize the relationship between ethics, communication and photography through an innovative and diverse festival.

Thanks to a rich program of exhibitions by international and award-winning photojournalists, there are meetings, workshops, portfolio reviews, video-projections, guided tours, authour talks, book presentations, educational projects for students and numerous other events.

We also organize an international contest, the World Report Award|Documenting Humanity. It isn’t simply a contest that through its prizes economically supports those who are actively engaged in this difficult sector of photography, but it also represents a way for all participants to enter into a community we have built over the past 10 years and composed of professionals who are already collaborating with our organization.

Since its first year, the Festival of Ethical Photography has always given particular attention to the use of photography by those organisations that deal with social issues. For this reason there is a special section completely dedicated to the nonprofit world that is reserved for the presentation of photographic works commissioned to photographers by nonprofit organisations and where NGOs can organize advocacy activities.

Other than the annual event taking place every fall (September and October), the organization of the Festival works daily to make sure that the photographers’ work is seen and their voices heard thanks to several initiatives such as the Travelling Festival, exhibits ideated and curated in Lodi that travel all over Italy and Europe.

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Carola is the first woman in her family to get a hunting license and she is one of the very few woman hunters in the Valle d’Aosta region, where only 2% of hunters are represented by women. Today hunting has profoundly changed compared to the past. In ordert to protect biodiversity, there is selective hunting now, which is monitored and managed by the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, by the Wildlife Management Committee and by the Forest Rangers.
Carola thinks that hunting is one of the possible natural closing of the circle of life. This choice makes her an active part of the food chain, defining her role as a predator. She decided to exclusively consume the meat of the animals she hunts: deer and roe deer.
This is an ethical choice, which includes an ecological aspect: reducing the pollution caused by the consumption of meat. In order to be able to support oneself through hunting, knowledge of the territory is crucial for assessing the risks both in the moment of the shot, but also in the choice of the path to take in order to recover the killed animal.
Mistakes could take a huge toll on the prey and the hunter. The management of a killed animal requires preparation and knowledge that derives from studies and advice handed down from father to son. Good knowledge means less waste and better preparation of meat and skins. In Carola’s views being a hunter is the natural role of each human being, linked to habits, precise rituals and to the cyclical passage of the seasons, as happens for life in the woods: man is also an animal and for this reason he also depends on nature.

Photo copyright: © Erika Pezzoli.

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