Luciano Perbellini

TIFA 2025 Interview with Li Xuelian
1st Place winner in Book, Non-Professional, “Fragili Equilibri”

Can you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background in photography?

I am a professional photographer who has been working with non-professional photographers for five years.

My teaching does not aim to turn them into professional photographers, but to get them to start thinking professionally when they take pictures, that’s for sure.

Photography can also be a powerful tool for living your daily life better, enriching it with details and training your ability to see the nuances that make each day different.

How did collaboration influence the way stories were chosen, photographed, and shaped?

The idea behind the stories is simple: to recount the everyday lives of these people.

Without trying to make them seem heroic or playing on photogenic nuances to create striking images.

Simply recounting their everyday lives.

Rather than portraying vulnerability alone, the project highlights resilience and hope. Why was it important for you to frame these individuals as active contributors to a more just and inclusive future?

We all have a thousand nuances; sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves, other times we feel like lions. That’s okay, it’s human nature.

The photographers who worked within those families did not go in with preconceptions or with the idea of bringing out anything in particular; they tried to keep it simple and be spectators.

What does winning at the Tokyo International Foto Awards mean to you personally and professionally?

I am really very happy, because this proves that people without previous photographic experience and without an “important” background, ordinary people who have learned to use a camera and organise what they do, can win a prestigious award such as the Tokyo International Foto Awards.

It is proof that, in the end, photography is truly within everyone’s reach.

Yes, of course, there will be no new Salgados, there is no doubt about that, but improving language and expressive ability, yes, I am extremely convinced of that.

And this result, like so many others achieved over time, gives me further confirmation.

I am really happy for my students, because it is an award that is worth much more than all the ones I have won as a professional.

Many of the people you photograph are described as “the last ones” in society. How does photography, in your view, have the power to challenge this narrative and shift the way viewers perceive social hierarchies?

I have always thought that photography does not really serve the subjects being photographed.

In most cases, apart from some recognition or practical help, they do not gain much from it.

Yet it is thanks to them that many other people can stop and reconsider their priorities, recalibrate their lives, and begin to understand that, although we all always lack something, what we have is already an unattainable wealth for many others.

That is why I hope that this kind of awareness, aligning ourselves morally and being more attentive to the world around us, can help everyone build a better society.