Presentation
Since February 2006, Angola is going through its worst ever cholera epidemic, with 33,000 cases reported and more than 1,200 deaths. Over 16,200 cases occurred in Luanda, Angolan capital city, more than 13,000 have been treated by the medical organization Médecins Sans Frontières. The outbreak has rapidly spread from Luanda to the provinces and to date, 11 of the 18 provinces are reporting cases. The outbreak erupted in Boa Vista, one of the poorest shantytowns that surround the center of Luanda.
For the last 30 years, including the 23 years of civil war, Luanda has seen a fast increase in its urban population, especially in slum areas. Luanda has been hit particularly hard by this outbreak: more than half of the infected people live in the capital city, and 20 % of the deaths occurred there. No part of the vast city has been spared from the epidemic.
Biography
Paolo Pellegrin was born in 1964 in Rome. He became a Magnum Photos nominee in 2001 and a full member in 2005. He is a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine.
Pellegrin is winner of many awards, including eight World Press Photo and numerous Photographer of the Year Awards, a Leica Medal of Excellence, an Olivier Rebbot Award, the Hansel-Meith Preis, and the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award. In 2006 he was assigned the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography.
He is one of the founding members of the touring exhibition and installation Off Broadway along with Thomas Dworzak, Alex Majoli and Ilkka Uimonen. He has published four books. He lives in New York and Rome.
