Luca Bonacini

Luca Bonacini was born in Rome in 1966, the son of an air force pilot and the third of three brothers. To follow his father's assignments, he moved to Zaire (now the Republic of Congo) and then to Belgium. When he was 8 years old, he attended the Italian section of the European School in Brussels, a school for expats that offered little contact with Belgians.

Having grown up elsewhere, when he returned to Italy he felt like a foreigner in his homeland: Italian in Belgium and Belgian in Italy.

He graduated from university with a degree in Sociology and started working for Ansa, concentrating on photography.

He arrived in Brazil in 1997 with his wife Florence and both began working in the labour department of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. In 2001, Florence started working for UNICEF and he began working full-time as a photographer. They moved to Brasilia and, while his wife worked, he took care of the family and their two sons, Ivan and Manuel.

Florence got a new job and, in 2006, they moved to Peru. There they experience two “traumas”: the 2007 earthquake, for which Luca provided photographic coverage, and an hour-long kidnapping, enduring death threats.

In 2009, they move to Bosnia Herzegovina, reconnecting with Europe. Bonacini was the photographer behind the photo shoot “People of Sarajevo”.

Florence had to move again and, in 2014, they moved to Argentina; in 2017, they returned to Brazil where they felt as though they had “returned home”.

Being “people of the world” has led Bonacini to rethink his identity and his relationship with his Italian roots: his children perceive the concept of “homeland” no longer as a place of origin but as family and affections.

Story collected in collaboration with Rai Radio 3.