“I would like to become a teacher.” Hannan (5 years old) from Aleppo, part of the series ‘Kids from Aleppo’ 2016 © Elena Givone
How can a photographic artist address suffering? What effect does the photojournalist have who photographs suffering and shows it to those who live luckier lives? Do those images stimulate change or simply become a kind of spectacle against which we measure our own good fortune?
For the Italian photographer Elena Givone, it is not pity she wishes to evoke, but hope. Hope for those who suffer and for those who could help, if only they were motivated to do so. Hope that is found in using that highest of human abilities – imagination – to see beyond the current circumstance to the possibility of something better. To dream the dreams of potential; to believe that things can change.
Elena Givone speaks to Talking Pictures about her work in Bosnia, Brazil, Mali, and a Greek camp for Syrian refugees.
talking-pictures.online/2025/05/07/elena-givone-the-value...