TITLE: Selva Oscura (Dark Forest)

Midway upon the journey of our life,
I found myself within a dark forest
For the straightforward path had been lost…”

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy has been calculated to be made of over 100,000 words, but I think its genius is evident already in the very first 21. The above verse, which starts it.

I started working on this project - portraits of human disquiet - exactly at a moment when I had lost the straight forward path and was painfully wandering in a dark forest. Technically, I started walking around the city, at dusk, when the sky is still luminous but darkness is making the landscape fade, and looked for a natural ''spot-light'' (a lamp post, a shop window, some car lights) that I could use to shoot a totally candid portrait that could look like a studio portrait against the city falling into the night.

Once I found the place, I started waiting for what I was really after to pass by: the human face.

The idea was is to highlight this miracle - the human face - imagining they also were lost in a dark forest, far from the straight-forward path.

I gave the unexpected project a working title: Antartica. Because I was trying to portray humans as I would in Antartica, faced with the power of nature, with the indifferent force of the wind, the ice, of the great white. Only, they were in a comfortable city. But faced with the turmoil and storms of human life that - not knowing the people, but being myself human - I could imagine in their faces.

In a very stormy and uncertain age, a glimpse of the fragility and strength of the human being.

AUTHOR: Antonio Denti (Italy)

Antonio Denti is an award-winning news cameraman, in love with still photography.

Born in Catania (Sicily) in 1972, he graduated as a social anthropologist at the University of London ( Goldsmiths' College and SOAS - School of Oriental and African Studies - ) but became a cameraman.

He has been working for Reuters since 1998.

He covered conflict and change in Kosovo (1999, 2001, 2008), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Israel (2005 - 2006), Gaza (2005), Lebanon (2006), Tunisia (2011), the death of Pope John Paul II, the election of Pope Benedict XVI, his resignations and the election of Pope Francis, the Tsunami of 2004 in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, eruptions of mount Etna, earthquakes in central and northern Italy, the migrant crises in the Mediterranean (2006, 2011, 2015-2019) and in the Balkans (2015), the crisis around Catalonia's bid for independence (2017), the Covid-19 pandemics (2020), Pope Francis' pilgrimage to Iraq (2021).

In 2018, he won the RTS (Royal Television Society) Journalism Award for Camera Operator of the Year.

In 2019, he won the ''Maria Grazia Cutuli'' international journalism award (national section).