Presentation
At two o’clock in the morning, they show up at one of the 500 brick factories in the Kathmandu Valley and produce an average of 1,600 bricks per day per family. The bricks are transported by young immigrants from India and Bangladesh, aged between 8 and 16, who live in makeshift shacks and transport between 1,000 and 2,000 bricks weighing 4 kg each per day for a wage of 5 euros. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), more than 2.6 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 worked in Nepal in 2007, accounting for more than 40% of the total.
Biography
Luca Catalano Gonzaga was born in Rome in 1965. After completing studies in business, he forged a career in the field of communications, working with Mondadori, Stream, Mediaset and Nbc Universal. It was during this period that he developed a passion for photography.
Between 2004 and 2006 he carried out humanitarian photojournalism assignments for the Sovereign Order of Malta (SMOM) in Cambodia Italy, Laos, Lebanon, Palestine, Poland and Romania.
This experience led him to undertake ‘Worldless Children’, a photographic project focused on children’s rights throughout the world that he began in 2007.
Since 2008, Catalano Gonzalo has taken on photographic assignments that have ranged from the documentation of human rights abuses to portraiture and commercial work for business and industry.
In 2009 he receives the well known acknowledgement “Grand Prix Care du Reportage Humanitarie 2009”, thanks to a coverage of the child labour in Nepal, introduced and rewarded by the Festival International du Photojournalisme Visa Pour l’Image, in Perpignan.
In 2010 he creates a non profit association, “Witness Image”, to realize photographic reportages related to human rights defense.
The photos awarded are part of are part of a project called “Child survival in a changing climate”.
