Since July 2015, several towns and cities in the Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeastern region have broken away from Turkey, with groups of young Kurds - not affiliated to the traditional PKK chain-command and instead belonging to the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H) - who have taken up arms, dug trenches and erected barricades to seal off neighborhoods and prevent the advances of the Turkish security forces to assert control of their territory.
In response, Turkish government forces have declared a state of emergency, imposed curfews and implemented repressive measures against Kurds. A number of towns in the southeast have become battlefields and massive security operations are under way against the youth Kurdish armed movement, during which hundred of civilians have died.
Tommaso Protti (Italy, 1986) is a documentary photographer focusing on conflict and contemporary issues in Brazil and Turkey.
He graduated in Political Science at the University of Rome and explored several career paths before and after his studies. In 2010, he took his first steps with photography and in 2011 he moved to London where accomplished a Masters degree in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication. Since then, he has worked as a freelance photographer devoting himself to documenting stories in Turkey, Italy and Brazil. His long-term project investigates the social fabric of Southeast Turkey and documents the struggle of the Kurdish minority to obtain full autonomy and recognition of their cultural identity.
His work has been exhibited in a number of galleries and festivals including the Royal Albert Hall, Les Recontres d’Arles and Prix Bayeux-Calvados, Belfast Photo Festival, 10b Photography gallery and the Macro Museum in Rome. Tommaso was a participant of the Eddie Adams Workshop and the Emerging Talent program of Reportage by Getty Images and was granted the National Geographic Grant.
His work has been featured in internationally prominent publications including The New York Times, Time Magazine, National Geographic, The New Yorker and Le Monde among others.
