Rise Again: Challenging perceptions of disability

In photojournalism, an image has a purpose, and that is often to change the opinion of one or more people. At the moment, in our country - Italy - there are a lot of taboos and disability is one of them. For many, disabled people are “half human”, and they become particularly vulnerable during an economic crisis.

We used photojournalism to highlight this theme. We are sure it's an effective means, and not the only one, but, as photographers, we could transmit our message better this way.

We hope with our project that people see, through our shots, that disabled people have huge potential. We hope they see in these images a person with a mind, heart, feelings, dreams, love and wishes. So we believe that our photos and the use of sport could change the ideas of some of our fellow citizens on disability.

But a photo is limited in time. After the end of the London Paralympic Games, our work was old. The media don't talk about the Paralympics as much anymore. We need to use a means that can have the possibility to live, not just for one month, but for some years. So the idea was to create a book. A book has a soul. It can return to your life. It can be taken from your shelf at any time.

We did a similar project in Vancouver at the 2010 Winter Paralympic Games, and, in part, we arrived at our goal. We have introduced it at a lot of evening events, where we could discuss disability. A book is physical so it's a perfect tool to create awareness events: a photo festival, an evening in a photo circle, a show in a hospital, a lesson in a school.

The new book, ‘Rise Again,’ from Emanuel Broli, Marco Ciccolella and Laura Predolini, will be available from the beginning of May.