I'm Giovanni Cocco, an independent Italian photographer. I live between Rome and Berlin. I'm interested in reportage photography through an anthropological and social approach. Among the many topics discussed in my career, the work that represents myself is "Monia", a long-term project on my sister's life. The photographs came first, before the story which they belong to. They are the result of an experience and the desire to tell it.

Monia is 45 years old. She is disabled since birth. She lives in habits, simple gestures and long moments without words or actions. A world away from everything else, solitary, confined, but not empty, where time is made up of moments, a present that does not need to project into the future.

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Photographing Monia is an act of knowledge and research. It is a way to understand her, wondering what she thinks and what she wants. From life, from me. Soon it won’t just be the approach through photography, which will bring me to her, to remember the gestures and glances with which she seems to touch and see the world. One day she will be part of my life, she will have to deal with me, every day, with the way I see her and love her. Telling her story and her life is the first step for one to enter the life of the other, with both the joy and the difficulty of the encounter.

Since "Monia" is the recipient of the Reminders Photography Stronghold Grant 2015, I decided to give a new shape to the project. My aim is to create a traveling exhibition around the world, starting in March 2016 in Tokyo, at the Reminders Photography Gallery. I need your help to produce the prints and the exhibition book. I wish my photos could bring Monia where she can not go, and I want the viewers to enter for a moment in her universe.

Monia on CNN Photo Blog

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