Fotografen - Einzelansicht

"He was born in 1960 in Recanati, but lives and works in Carpi. He began his career as photographer in 1989.
Images shot by Cocco tell social problems of those living on the edge of society. His photos have been published on Italian and International magazines as well as shown in collective exhibitions. Photography and interest for mankind in his habitat pushed him to travel worldwide, mostly throughout Asian countries. In Banghladesh he portrayed the living conditions of street children and minorile work. In Vietnam, shortly after the reopening of frontiers, he realized a reportage whose images have been exposed in the "Vietnam Today" exhibition (Modena, 1993). Subsequently, he offered himself to document the drama of anti-personnel landmines victims in Cambodia, in collaboration with Emergency NGO. Still in Cambodia, thanks to the New Humanity NGO, Cocco extended his work to minorile prostitution.
In 1999 and 2000, in Brazil, he portrayed blind men at the Benjamin Constant Institute, in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the exploitation of working children at Marajoa Island, in Amazonia. During the same year, a selection of his pictures about childhood shocked by war has been shown in the exhibition "Ci Sono Bambini A Zig-Zag", held in Carpi.
In 2000, Kosovo, within the educational project "Peace Seeds", financed by the Rainbow Mission in Mitrovica, he carried out a work of documentation about living conditions of civilians in postwar period.
Over the past years, Cocco started a personal research about handicap and the world of the so-called "different abilities". This work, still in progress, is named "Babylon". In 2001 he realized a work on Pediatric Onco-hematology ward of Bologna Sant'Orsola Hospital.
In 2002 he began his project to document prison conditions in Italy, both in female and male prisons. The reportage was assigned by the Equal Opportunity Commission of Carpi with the sponsorship of High Patronage of the President of the Republic.
From 2003 he has been collaborating with MSF on a long-term project about immigration in Italy. At the end of the same year, with other thirteen photographers, he took part to a project named "Eurogeneration", a photo survey on youth all over the 25 countries of the enlarged European Union. In 2004, those images were exhibited at Palazzo Reale, in Milan, and became a book published by Contrasto.
Francesco Cocco joined Contrasto in 2003."

www.contrasto.it

"Contrasto is a unique enterprise in the field of photography. Contrasto was born in the 80's to be a point of reference for quality photojournalism.

The agency's photographers, in addition to its close contact with the information and culture worlds, allows Contrasto to be a leader in the field of author photography.

Its vast range of activities (production and distribution of images for journalism, advertising and image consulting, fashion and publishing, archives available online) is guaranteed by the various resources it draws from; Most notably Magnum, the prestigious agency founded by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Contrasto is publishing house as well, working to realize photographic books, and exhibits in cooperation with Italy's public and private institutions.

The high level of Contrasto photographers' amounts to a gallery of unique images suitable for collecting purposes as well."

www.contrasto.it