Alessandro Iovino

Alessandro Iovino is a freelance photographer born and raised in Italy.
He started his photography career in 2013, after gaining a short Diploma in studio photography in London and a Bachelor’s degree in Economic and Marketing. The main motivation that has inflamed his interest in photography was the need to escape and feel alive.
Alessandro tries to push his photography to the deepest point of himself, trying to use it as an instrument to discover his obsessions and through them, trying to tell stories with the highest level of personal identity and authorship.
He moves better in Documentary photography and in short reportage that has a follow up with a bigger story. He really cares and gives importance to the coherence of the significance of the stories that he chooses, in a way or another, they have to explain and continue his personal path.
In October 2014 he entered the Italian collective CESURA the independent agency founded by the Magnum photographer Alex Majoli, as an external contributor, but 2016 he decided to exit it and continue his career as a freelance. He’s been working with national and international titles, including New York Times, Le Monde, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Internazionale, La Stampa and many others.
His interest in photography is now moving towards long-term projects because he personally thinks that nowadays if you want to be a photographer you need to slow down, reflect and go deeper in the projects, while the world keeps running, forgetting and not paying attention.

The Arctic Prison

The Arctic Prison it is the result of five different projects in the Arctic Cirle, between the Finnmark area and the northern side of Russia.
I have first come across the Arctic, while I was following a story about refugees escaping from the Middle East and directing to northern Russsia, to enter the Norwegian’s doors from the Arctic.
That story became a real journey, I started looking for refugees in Moscow but I only found them in Nikel in the most extreme point of the Russian Arctic.
A post-Soviet industrial city, populated only by few thousands of people, mostly working in the nickel factories scattered everywhere in the city.
The refugees making this stabbing journey have used all their financial resources to open a new escaping route.
Some of them selling their activity or their house, in the hope to find a better life in the Arctic Circle, where the winters are far below zero and summers have no dark.
In addition to that, they had to deal their entrance to Norway, not only with ridiculous border’s rules, but also with the Russian mafia that in this tremendous exodus, have seen only a business.

Finnmark it is the North’s most side of Norway in the Arctic, it is a huge indented piece of land dominated only by a severe nature, closer to wolfs and rocks rather than humans.

For almost three years I’ve been traveling to Finnmark, trying to experience a bit of their life. I followed the Finnmarkslopet race, where dogs lead their humans through the Arctic in Europe’s most epic sled race.

I came back also to stay with NRS, one of the biggest European’s salmon producer, on their platform, photographing their slowly routine life between the sea and the fjord.

For a short stay I’ve also experienced the life of a young Sami girl, living with her in her wooden house on the tip of this upland in the middle of nowhere.
The closest form of life apart from us was many miles away.

The Arctic is exactly how you imagine, rigid, severe, and cold.
Its nature rules the life of whoever host and you better learn patience and get used to it very soon, if you want to survive.

Patience and planning are what I have most learned from the Arctic, you never go out if you are not aware of what and where your day will be.