VISUAL ESSAYS BY MATILDE GATTONI

Born in 1974, Matilde Gattoni is an Italian award winning photographer. For over a decade now Matilde Gattoni’s camera lens is faithfully capturing myriad facets of life as experienced in India or Eritrea, Uzbekistan or Iran, Syria or Somalia. After studying History at the Universite' des Sciences Humaines in Strasbourg, France, she decided to follow her passion for visual arts becoming a photographer.

Matilde’s career  was started as a photojournalist commenced when she was travelling in Israel and ended up covering the second Intifada early last decade. Her editorial work is published on Time, Time Lightbox, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Observer, Die Zeit, Foreign Policy, Neon Magazine, Geo, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Elle, Emirates Women, Brownbook. Later, she embraced also Architecture, Corporate, Portraits and Fashion photography.

Her book Uzbekistan, 10 years after independence; published in 2002 was made in collaboration with the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, one of the major experts of Central Asia and Afghanistan. The book depicts a social frame of Uzbekistan 10 years after its independence from the USSR and poses the delicate question of the future of the Uzbek nation, the most powerful country in Central Asia thanks to its strategic geographical position.

Matilde has been based for 7 years between the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon and has worked as a corporate photographer for clients such as HSBC, Shell, Bosch, Al Habtoor Leighton, Ferrari, Meydan, Formula 1 Abu Dhabi, Baccarat, Publicis, Wundermann, TDIC, Brownbook and ACCOR.

Whether, it is in The Swallows of Syria or in The Devil in Me, the plight of women feature prominently in many of Matilde Gattoni’s visual narratives. Similarly, their victories also receive due attention as could be seen through her photographic essay on Elham Al Qasim, the first woman from UAE to reach North Pole. Over a period of time she also diversified and set out exploring a wide range of topics from architectural marvels, posh interiors to high octane sports like Formula One but always with a humane touch. 

Ironically, as she now treads the different parts of the world camera in hand she lets her own visual essays to be a part of mankind’s history.

Savina Rafael Daoud, 22 years old, an Assyrian girl from Ankawa, posing during Akitu, the Assyrian New Yea

A farmer in Iraq el Amir grabbing some dry soil from his land

Mongolian falcon and a Siberian model meet in the Emirati desert, not far from the Saudi border

Dancer, Circue du Soleil by Matilde Gattoni

Water crisis in Yemen 

Jordan - Wadi Faynan - Palestinian Beduin Family of 11 people living in the desert

Myriam, 15 years old greets her neighbors on her way to the water well located two hours walk away from her house in the Old Jewish area of Sana'a

Myriam,  cooks for her parents after having walked 2 hours to collect water from the nearest well

Yemen - Farmers washing clothes with rain water left in the ponds

Abu Dhabi, the Iranian market

A model taking a break in the backstage of a fashion show

Kuwait City

Somali refugees carrying wood back to their tents

Fisherman in Sumatra

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, enter in a mosque

Indian migrant workers enjoying a day at the beach in Jumeirah 

A bedouin, a camel and a desert storm, somewhere lost in the Kuwaiti desert

A bath in the Indian Ocean

The town of Sigli, in Sumatra. This little girl had stopped talking since she had seen her younger brother swallowed by a gigantic wave her mother recalls like the head of a black snake pointing at their house.