AFP headlines at Lodi Festival of Ethical Photography
AFP's award-winning coverage of Hong Kong protests and the coronavirus pandemic will feature in two exhibitions at the Festival of Ethical Photography in the northern Italian city of Lodi.
The 11th edition of the festival, which runs from September 26 to October 5, is dedicated to how the coronavirus has changed our lives.
Lodi and its Lombardy region was at the centre of a major outbreak earlier this year after the first Italian case was recorded at Codogno, some 20 kilmetres away.
AFP's extensive global coverage of the pandemic dominates the festival's overview of life in the time of COVID-19, with 34 of the 44 images that transport us to every continent coming from AFP photographers with the exhibit "Covid nel mondo".
AFP's work on the seven months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong is the second group exhibition "Hong Kong: Visioni Contrastanti". The coverage has already been crowned by a World Press Photo award for Nicolas Asfouri, while Anthony Wallace picked up the Rémi Ochlik Award at Visa Pour l'Image in France as well as a Human Rights Press award.
The agency's collective work on the demonstrations has also just won a prize for excellence from SOPA, one of the most prestigious journalism awards in Asia.
The two exhibitions will be staged in the gardens and on the railings surrounding Lodi's provincial government headquarters. Visitors will be able to listen to explanations of the photos in three languages using a special festival app.
Two retrospectives of work by AFP photographers were also featured in last year's festival, one on the dramatic journeys of migrants from Central America to the US, and the other on the "yellow vest" protest movement in France.