Alessandro Vincenzi

From the Series: TB at European Gates

Alessandro Vincenzi (b.1973, Italy) began professional photography late in life. After a degree in biology at the University of Bologna and a specialization in tropical medicine, he joined Medecins Sans Forntieres in 2005. During his free time on his missions for MSF as a biologist, he took pictures of patients and other people in distress in various contexts and countries. As the second prize winner of a photography contest, Alessandro attended a workshop in 2006, organized by the Toscana Photographic Workshop and VII Photo Agency. In 2008 Alessandro decided to become a full time professional photographer and left MSF. He is based in Madrid, Spain and is working on 2 long-term projects, “TB at European Gates” and ” Transgender in India”.

About the Photograph:

“Moldova has one of the highest numbers of Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis patients in the world. During the Soviet Union Regime hospitals and were often running out of drugs. Due to the migration of people, TB is on the rise again where it had almost disappeared. The Moldovan story is part of one of my bigger projects, TB at European Gates. I had been following this man for a few days. At the moment of my visit he was at the end of the treatment and as it often happens (patients feels better after few months of treatment), he was not regularly following the treatment anymore. “

“The morning that I took this picture, in the second largest city of Moldova, Balti, I went to his home with a social worker, who is working with an NGO and is supervising his medication. It was before 9 am for his treatment and he was not opening the door. After twenty minutes he showed up. He was completely drunk. He spent the night with a friend drinking and smoking in his room. You can see from the picture the disappointment of the social worker. Once inside the house, she got very angry and was shouting at the patient, but later on she almost got depressed. For seven months every day she used to go to his house “…he has always been a good guy…”, she was telling me, but the day when a foreigner visited, the day that there was the opportunity to show the world the good job that she did and that TB can be controlled even in Moldova, he misbehaved.”

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