I tell you the story of “The eSports Photographer”.

When in 2018 I won the first prizes with “Play The Game Over” I started to send my project to several Italian and international publishers.
Zero answers except for “We have already covered the topic” and “We don’t deal with videogames”.

2 years have passed since then and I find myself on “Il Fotografo“, the most relevant photography magazine in Italy.
The number 322 is very particular for the historical moment we are experiencing. It is also difficult for the editorial scene with the distribution on newsstands during the quarantine period and with the difficulties of the sale of the digital versions.
In this panorama, the magazine talks about a project on the digital world. Specifically, that of videogames, which forcefully impose themselves as media that transcends the emergency situations in which the real world can force us and of which we were not aware. We had never tried it on our skin.
The videogame is now favoring many situations that have materialized before us. Online purchases, remote school through videoconferencing and a simple video chat on your smartphone. Yes, because if today everyone has a smartphone in their hands, it is also thanks to the gaming Apps, which have always been the driving force behind the sales of a device together with the camera technologies. Apple has even recently arrived to introduce a subscription service exclusively dedicated to games (Arcade).

And this is how today (2020) the attention towards a photographic project on videogames has changed.
“There is already an article on eSports queued”, “Very interesting, let’s talk about it”, “Did you participate in the World Press Photo?”.

I’m happy. Because everything I did 3 years ago is finally expressing its potential.
The shape has never changed. The project has been here, on the site, always. People’s attention has simply changed towards a topic that has always suffered prejudice and misinformation.
And these have affected everyone, even publishers and critics, for a long time.
After all, my project was born to talk about that, to sensitize with photography those who ignore the identity of a reality as important as little known and valued with attention.

Many friends and fellow photographers told me that 2018 was too early. They were right.
An unprecedented project for its form and its content, which speaks of a reality always told without efficacy with recurring texts and stock images.
I still remember how (during my first releases for the project) those in the gaming sector called me “The eSports photographer”. At the time I did not understand and almost annoyed me to be labeled like this, considering that in eSport events it was full of photographers and video operators in charge and considering that I take pictures of many different situations.
But now I give another value to that appellation.
It was probably the first time that they saw a photographer represent their world, and not just photograph it.