Massimo Berruti received a W. Eugene Smith Fellowship Honoree award on October 17th 2012 for a body of work that is stunning for its consistency and the depth of the investigation.

Since 2008, Massimo Berruti has followed Pakistani militias fighting against the threatening rise of Taliban. They are in a struggle to preserve their liberty and culture, which has remained intact despite the raging conflict. Berruti avoids the lurid aesthetic and biased treatment of typical news photography. He photographs from the other side of the barricade, patiently documenting the impact of terror on this society and the mutations of its people.

Berruti uses black and white for its timelessness and intimacy. This choice makes the reality more palpable and profound than scenes of raw violence. The heavy night infuses the photographs with a rough texture. Bodies and trees writhe under the pressure of a serene chaos, while the stark contrasts revealed by a faint and burning light give the photographs a mystical character.

Some images evoke the classical paintings of the photographer’s native Rome: the light reveals a woman who encircles the face of his dead son with her hands like Mary Magdalen in representations of the Lamentation of Christ. The intense eyes, inevitable in Berruti’s photographs, tell the story of a people that refuses to be the puppet of a foreign power—a story largely underreported by the international community. Pakistan now finds itself fighting a silent and invisible war, difficult to portray, and media show no interest in it anymore. Berruti remains an unyielding and eloquent witness to this ongoing conflict.

Laurence Cornet