Camera in hand, Italian photographer Michele Sibiloni manoeuvres deftly between various countries and contexts, capturing images of political and social upheaval in central Africa and beyond for a wide range of international publications. His obsession about what happens after dark has led to various personal projects, such as “Nsenene Republic“ (about grasshopper hunting) and “Fuck it“, a survey of the vibrant nightlife in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. In the latter, which became a book, we are invited to enter a hedonistic world without limits, which clashes with the city’s extremely conservative daytime community — a parallel reality that is equality intrinsic to Uganda’s identity.
Q > From nightlife to politics — what inspired you to start documenting lives and events with your camera?
A > At the beginning it was an excuse to leave my hometown and an attempt to understand more of the world I was living in. After some time I realised that I wanted to make images where I could see myself and my experience. Something between the world I am living and myself I think where I want to make images.
Q > How does where you live affect your work?
A > Tremendously since I don’t travel much anymore for making images, I am attracted by the challenge to work not far from where I live. My life is between Italy and Uganda so those are the places I am photographing at the moment.
It can happen that I travel to do work and from there could grow an interest, am open to everything but I would like to stick with what I am familiar with.
Q > What inspires you?
A > I am inspired by bodies of work in any form that, looking at something small, could resonate in a bigger way, politically and socially.
Q > What makes you angry?
A > That we ended up in an individualistic society without any sense of community and therefore powerless.
Q > What’s the most disturbing or difficult thing you’ve seen through your camera?
A > I often encounter people in extremely difficult situations and in the last couple of years that has been affecting me more. Before I was mainly thinking about getting the job done and often there was no time for feeling bad.
As a one-time event, once I went filming a village in DRC during the war in 2012 after a bomb landed on a pile of volcanic rocks and everyone was torn apart; there was only a kid left behind with some sort of disabilities that was walking around and looking. I immediately thought I was in hell, a hell created by human beings.
Q > Tell us about moments in your life that helped define or change your identity.
A > After a few years of living far from my hometown, my family has been crucial but also when my son Diego was born. The approach of life is completely different and he definitely made me a better person.
Q > In your project “Fuck it” — what things conflicted you and inspired you at the same time?
A > I was inspired by life and whoever lives their lives to the fullest.
I was not conflicted by anything that I can remember, was also not thinking much even — my only concern was to get out of my house and make images. I did not have a plan to make a book and a show or anything like that. Everything evolved organically.
I am much more conflicted now.
Q > Give an example of a moment you wish you had captured on camera but didn’t/weren’t able to.
A > Sometimes it happens that we want to take an image and sometimes won’t happen and fractions of moments remain in my brain for a bit but then they go…
I really wish I would have photographed more in Italy, but I did not spend much time there in the past ten years. That is something that bothers me.
Hope it will happen in the near future.
Q > What’s the most satisfying part of the creative / documenting process?
A > I think the creative process is a journey and I do not see it in separated stages: from when you have a spark for an idea till the end, creativity needs to be involved otherwise the risk is that you will make something preconfascionated. Little twists that are happening during these journeys are vital.
Michele Sibiloni is an Italian photographer and videographer born in 1981, currently living between Italy and Uganda.
He has covered a various number of news events mainly on the African continent. These include South Sudan’s independence, Ugandan elections, Egypt’s revolution, the Libyan uprising, the M23 rebellion in D.R.C. and the attempted coup d’état in Burundi in 2015.
His editorial work has been published in The New York Times, the British Journal of Photography, Vice, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, M magazine and Wired among others.
Between 2012 and 2014, Sibiloni documented the nightlife of the Ugandan capital, Kampala. In 2016, the project became Fuck it, a photo-book published by Edition Patrick Frey. It has been selected among the best photo-books of the year by Time magazine, Internazionale, Sleek-Mag and Photo-book store UK.
Nsenene Republic is his ongoing project about grasshopper hunting in Uganda. It was shortlisted for the Pop CAP 2018 (Contemporary African photography prize), Photographic Museum of Humanity grant and Aperture Summer Open 2019.
