Masterclass
“Photography as an ethical act”
September 19th, 2026
From 9:30 to 13:00
Masterclass with Pablo Ernesto Piovano
Title: “Photography as an ethical act. Exploring the relationship between people, the environment and health”
An image can convey concepts and information that engage the viewer, allowing them to experience events first-hand, and leave a lasting impression where words often fall short.
This is the power of Pablo Ernesto Piovano’s photographic stories. Winner of the World Press Photo award in 2024 and 2026, Piovano has travelled thousands of kilometres across Argentina to give a voice and a face to the lives forgotten by agribusiness multinationals and to the Mapuche indigenous communities resisting predatory attacks on their territory and its resources. In this masterclass, designed for those who make communication their profession and, more generally, for anyone who needs to convey complex messages and wishes to learn how to do so with the power, immediacy and honesty of the photographic language, Piovano will share the method, ethics and visual grammar of his work.
Pablo Ernesto Piovano – Documentary photographer · Buenos Aires, 1981
Pablo Ernesto Piovano began taking photographs at the age of 18 for the Buenos Aires daily newspaper Página/12. Since then, his work has straddled the boundary between journalism and art, becoming one of the most significant photographic bodies of work on the environmental crisis in Latin America.
His project The Human Cost of Agrotoxins has revealed to the world the forgotten bodies of Argentina’s rural communities devastated by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. The Return of the Ancient Voices documents the resistance of the Mapuche people against extractivism.
His work has been published in Geo, Stern, National Geographic, Internazionale and Liberation. He has won the Nannen Prize (2018), the Greenpeace Award (2018) and the Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation Award (2017). In 2024 and 2026, he won the World Press Photo Award — Regional Latin America.
Program
A three-hour masterclass combining film screenings, theoretical discussion, practical analysis and open dialogue.
Opening — ‘Seeing the Unseen’
Guided observation exercise. Before raising the camera, learn to train your eye.
Structuring a narrative
Planning a reportage and storyboard
Screening and discussion
The Human Cost of Agrotoxins and The Return of the Ancient Voices — Piovano’s two seminal works, presented by the author. Images, stories, context. Environmental damage as human damage.
The photographer’s ethics and photography as collective healing
How can one depict damage without sensationalising it? Responsibility, proximity, critical distance. Photography as an instrument of justice and an act of collective healing.
Closing dialogue
Open questions, shared reflections. Space to continue the conversation and gather what remains.
Informazioni pratiche
Date
Time
Duration
Place
Aimed at
September 19th, 2026
9:30 – 13:00
3 hours of masterclass
Teatro Comunale
Communicators, content creators, marketing and advocacy professionals, photographers, teachers, healthcare workers, activists
Sign up for the Masterclass – places are limited!