ABOUT
Cinzia Canneri is an Italian photojournalist with a degree in psychology. She attended a masterclass in photojournalism at WSP Photography in Rome in 2016.
Working extensively in the Horn of Africa, she documented the peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 2018 and the consequences of the war in Tigray on women in 2021.
Her project “Women’s Bodies as Battlefields” won the Camille Lepage Award at Visa Pour l’Image in 2023, the Documentary Photography Zeke Award SDN in 2023, the Circle of Life Award at the International Photojournalism Festival Vilnius in 2023, and first place in the POYi Issue Reporting Stories (Pictures of the Year International) in 2022.
Previously, she received an Award of Excellence at the POYi Science and Natural History Picture Story in 2016 and first place at Umbria Fest in 2019 for her project “Like Two Wings,” which focuses on asbestos victims in Italy.
Canneri’s work has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Aftenposten Innsikt, Days Japan, L’Obs, Internazionale, Mind, Millennium, and Espresso.
Cinzia Canneri has analyzed the condition of Eritrean and Tigrinya women fleeing across Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Her work focuses on women subjected to violence and victims of socio-political shifts and conflicts, even after the 2018 Eritrea-Ethiopia peace agreement. Initially, she documented Eritrean women fleeing to Ethiopia from 2017 to 2019. After the Ethiopian federal army invaded Tigray in November 2020, with Eritrean and Amhara support, she expanded her documentation to include Tigrinya women joining Eritrean women in their flight to Addis Ababa or Sudan.
Cinzia Canneri has highlighted the use of sexual violence against women as a weapon of war. Following the ceasefire of the Tigray war, with the agreement signed in Pretoria in 2022, she is documenting the aftermath these violences have had on women in both their private and social lives. Additionally, she has also showcased the resilience of Tigrayan and Eritrean women who have come together to provide mutual support. Cinzia Canneri’s reportages are characterized by narrating significant social events through the intimate life stories of the people involved. Her work has received prestigious awards and has been published internationally.
Cinzia Canneri worked for many years as a social psychologist in very challenging and marginalized contexts. This allowed her to develop important empathy and communication skills, which she also applies in her photographic work. Each of her photojournalistic projects stems from a relationship she establishes with the communities she documents. Cinzia Canneri collaborates with the Eritrean and Tigrayan diaspora, actively participating in their human rights advocacy activities. Some of her works have been used to raise awareness about the political history of Eritrea and Ethiopia, from which millions of people flee due to the repression enacted there. Cinzia Canneri is the artistic director of a social festival called Followme in Tuscany (Italy), which organizes photographic exhibitions, talks, theatrical performances, and artistic performances on contemporary journalistic topics. She teaches photography courses in high schools and is often invited to conduct workshops in photography meetings. Lately, she has been giving lectures on the position of women in the history of photography, analyzing the works of many female photographers in relation to the socio-cultural context in which they are placed.
2024 Visa Pour l’Image, Perpignan, France
2023 Photoville Festival, Brooklyn Bridge, New York
2022 Kawasaki Peace Museum, Kanagawa, Japan
2020 Pinacoteca Civica, Tuscany, Italy
2018 Umbria World Fest, Tuscany, Italy
2018 Grofest Photography Festival, Tuscany, Italy
2018 Pinacoteca Civica, Tuscany, Italy
