Paolo Troilo
Italy
Born in Taranto, Paolo now lives and works in Milan and Palermo.
A self-taught artist, he first began drawing in pencil at the age of 4.
Paolo studied Architecture and Modern Literature at the University of Florence, then in Rome at the European Institute of Design.
He has worked as Creative Director for several prestigious international advertising agencies. In 2007 he was nominated best Italian creative by the Art Directors Club Italiano (ADCI).
In April 2005, in parallel with his advertising activity, Paolo’s career as a professional artist began when he started painting with his fingers for fun (he had forgotten to buy the brushes). It is thanks to his technique of dipping the tip of his fingers directly into jars of black and ivory acrylic that he became one of a kind in the art world.
Paolo’s works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, in Milan, Rome, Florence, Madrid, Paris, Singapore, San Francisco, Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Los Angeles.
“Be Water, my friend” said Bruce Lee in his famous interview on the Pierre Berton Show. Because water can understand and therefore take whatever form it encounters, adapting itself with the power to caress or destroy
Roberto Ridi
Italy
Born on the Island of Elba
From an early age Roberto nurtured a love for professional photography. Moving from the magic of B/W to a passion for colour, he has lived through the transition of the curiosity of photographic film to the speed of digital photography, replacing the blackness of the dark room with a screen overflowing with creativity and colour.
A professional photographer since 1980, Roberto is a visual storyteller specialising in naturalistic reportage, ranging from aerial photography to underwater, from portraiture to landscape, always keeping a close and careful focus on Man and Nature’s designs.
Roberto is author of numerous international publications and responsible for setting up the Tuscan Archipelago National Park’s photographic archive
The sea is what water means to me, a magnificent liquid, the sky's mirror. I live on an island, embraced by this immense element, changing, unstoppable, capable of instilling serenity but commanding respect, both gentle and mighty. From the transparency of the surface to its dark depths, it is like the human soul
GMB Akash
Bangladesh
Born in Bangladsh
He grew up in a home far removed from my profession.
Throughout His childhood he did not have access to photographers, their work, or even a camera.
Photography did not exist for him in theory or in practice. Then a decade later, he found his father’s old camera and his life took a different turn. His fascination for the captured image was uncontainable and overcame everything — even his inexperience. Not knowing what he was doing or why, he went everywhere shooting anything and everything that caught my attention. The only thing he was certain of were the subjects he photographed.
He concentrated on people living on the edge of society because their faces, lives, and living conditions held a particular fascination for him. Gradually he became absorbed in their daily lives for months on end, learning from their experiences.
His desire to capture it all on film pushed him to go to places and to meet people he never would have encountered otherwise. Each visit gave him a deeper understanding of humanity.
As he improved in his art over the years, his work has been featured in over 100 major, international publications including: National Geographic, Vogue, Time, Sunday Times, Newsweek, Geo, Stern, Der Spiegel, The Fader, Brand Ein, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Colors, The Economist, The New Internationalist, Kontinente, Amnesty Journal, Courier International, PDN, Die Zeit, Days Japan, Hello, and Sunday Telegraph of London.
He has received more than 100 international photography awards and recognition starting in 2002 when he became the first Bangladeshi to be selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in the Netherlands. He was one of the speakers at the fifth Global Investigative Journalism Conference, held at Lillehammer, Norway in 2008 and as well as at Ted Talk at TEDxOporto 2011, in Portugal where He was the first Bangladeshi to speak for this event. Also He was one of the speakers at TEDxHyderabad 2017. In the same year, 2017, He was one of the speakers at the "7th Forum of Emerging Leaders in Asian Journalism", in Yogyakarta, Indonesia".
He has had Solo Exhibitions from 2006 to 2018 in Bangladesh, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, the USA in New York, N.Y. and Charleston, S.C, as well as in the Czech Republic and Greece.
Some people have no time to enjoy the rain because they remain too busy collecting drinking water. Please do not waste a drop of water, someone out there is spending hours just trying to get some!
Marco Beretta
Italy
Marco is a photoreporter, travels in Asia with inseparable Hasselblad. Buddhist monks images, their symbols, sacred places & moments of prayer are the subjects of his projects
The quality of the water changes everything. And what I used is a snow collected five years ago on plum blossoms, when I was in the temple of the Sacred Volute Lens of the Funerary Incense. From each flower I made snow fall into a crystal vase, engraved with spiritual images, to then let it settle for five years, deeply buried under the ground. - Cao Xueqin
Christy Lee Rogers
United States
Christy is a visual artist that builds elaborate scenes of coalesced colors and entangled bodies that exalt the human character as one of vigor and warmth, while also capturing the beauty and vulnerability of the tragic experience that is the human condition.
'I use water to create worlds outside of this reality. Worlds in which I want to live, which are soft, passionate, full of freedom and yet show the vulnerability of humanity in a context of hope and beauty.
Miriam Watsemba
Uganda
Miriam is an award winning documentary photojournalist and storyteller, with a background in Journalism and Communication.
As cliche as it may sound, water really is life. It is a representation of our bottomless possibilities, depth and broadness as humanity.’
Anna Acquistapace
Italy
Anna is a photoeditor, Communication strategist & Content creator and president of Gruppo Redattori Iconografici Nazionale.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste - Saint Francis of Assisi
Meaghan Ogilvie
Canada
Meaghan is an internationally recognized Photographer and visual artist whose diverse artistic collaborations are often aimed at raising awareness about water conservation.
Water is life
Trần Tuấn Việt
Vietnam
Tran Tuan Viet is an award-winning photographer and internationally published visual-storyteller.
Water is the source of life and exists within each of us. Love the water as you love yourself.
Luisa Bondoni
Italy
Luisa is art historian and critic of photography
Water is life. Nothing more than water tells us about the tragic division of the world, divided into that part that wastes it and that part that beg for it
Giacomo Brini
Italy
Giacomo is a free-lance, professor of photography, founder and artistic director of Riaperture Photofestival Ferrara.
wWater
drinking means feeding, it is used to talk about culture, to talk about love, to talk about life.
Drinking means satisfying oneself by drinking.
It feeds on water.
The most precious asset must be made indispensable and therefore protected.
Georgina Goodwin
Kenya
Georgina Goodwin is an independent documentary photographer specialized in social issues, women stories, and the environment.
When I was a young girl someone told me that the third world war would be over water. Back then I couldn’t believe that this could ever happen.
I’m saddened and shocked that today it seems we could be close to this. Water is everything to us, without it we simply cannot live. We can and must work very hard to keep this from becoming our reality, for everyone everywhere.
Angelo Ferrillo e Sara Rossatelli
Italy
Sara is photographer and interior designer, Angelo is photoreporter, photoeditor, professor of photography and engineering. A couple of documentarist and life partners, an unique duo in our jury team.
Water is a natural oxymoron. It muffles and resounds, it is one and there are many.
Its transparency preserves the colors of the rainbow and its light and perpetual caress leaves traces of its presence.
Capable of shaping massive surfaces and spreading life, each drop is the mirror of wonderful worlds.
One day we will really realize how important it was to study from an early age that we are made of 60% water.
That day we will probably understand how stupid we were to underestimate the importance of that teaching.
Fausto Podavini
Italy
Born in Rome, where he lives and works.
After graduating from the Technical Institute of Electronics, he received his Master’s degree in Reportage at the Photography Academy “Jonh Kaverdash” in Milan. He began his photographic journey first as an assistant and studio photographer, to approach gradually to photo-reportage.
Podavini has also been part of MIFAV Tor Vergata University, where got to know and been in contact with many photographers. After abandoning studio photography to devote himself exclusively to reportage, he then embarked himself as a freelance, working with various non-profit organization for the realization of reports in Italy, Peru, Kenya and Ethiopia, where he currently is pursuing some personal photo projects. In 2009 he began a collaboration with the Collective WSP, joined permanently in 2010, where, in addition to work as a photographer in collective projects, he works as a professor of Photojournalism. In addition to his various reports in Africa, South America and India, Podavini has carried out important work on the Italian territory such as a report on sport for disabled, a report in a juvenile prison and a work on Alzheimer’s disease, with whom he won the Daily Life section of the World Press Photo 2013.
His works have won international awards such as The World Press Photo in 2013 and 2018, Il Poy in 2016 and 2018, Sony, Yves Rocher Grant and have been published in the most important international magazines such as 6Mois, LeVie / LeMonde, GEO ES, Stern, Internzainale, Donna Moderna, Nathional Geographic, Days Japan and has exhibited in major cities such as New York, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome.
We will never under stand the importance of Water, until the soil will be completely arid
