Bosa, Bosa, Bosa!
Bosa, Bosa, Bosa!
Gianfranco Tripodo
April 28, 2015
“The fences that separate Melilla from Morocco are six metres high. On this specific day, 25 people tried to get over, looking for a better life in Europe. The Guardia Civil were already waiting for them on the other side. They took the refugees back to Morocco, which is, in fact, illegal. Two men had hidden from them under a car. They waited for the right moment and made a dash for it. The police did not follow them. They had managed to make it to Europe!
I’d been wanting to capture how the refugees get over the fence for a long time. I’ve been working on a project about the situation of refugees on Europe's most southern border for about three years. Now I’ve come in third in the General News category of the World Press Photo Award. The winning picture, titled Bosa, Bosa, Bosa, was not a first choice for my favourites file. It was only after some time that it gained weight for me. One of the colleagues who was there with me, took an almost identical picture, except that the leg of the policeman was somewhat offset. He was the first person to call me up and congratulate me.
If I were to choose a picture from the series, that somehow defines the whole story, it would not necessarily have been this one. It might have been a photo of the jump over the fence. Such a picture shows very clearly that movement can’t be stopped by walls – they just makes it more dangerous.”
You can see other pictures from the series at LFI Blog – they were taken with a Leica M9.
I’d been wanting to capture how the refugees get over the fence for a long time. I’ve been working on a project about the situation of refugees on Europe's most southern border for about three years. Now I’ve come in third in the General News category of the World Press Photo Award. The winning picture, titled Bosa, Bosa, Bosa, was not a first choice for my favourites file. It was only after some time that it gained weight for me. One of the colleagues who was there with me, took an almost identical picture, except that the leg of the policeman was somewhat offset. He was the first person to call me up and congratulate me.
If I were to choose a picture from the series, that somehow defines the whole story, it would not necessarily have been this one. It might have been a photo of the jump over the fence. Such a picture shows very clearly that movement can’t be stopped by walls – they just makes it more dangerous.”
You can see other pictures from the series at LFI Blog – they were taken with a Leica M9.
Gianfranco Tripodo+-
Gianfranco Tripodo was born in Manila in 1981, and grew up in Italy. While studying media sciences and drawing in Bologna, he was also a member of Cesura, a collective of photographers headed by Magnum photographer Alex Majoli. After graduating, he went to Spain where he took part in the Reflexions Masterclass for contemporary photography between 2009 and 2011. Tripodo currently lives in Madrid and is represented by the Contrasto Agency. More