Gazing Inside: A Photographic Journey inside the Prison World

Valerio Bispuri was born in Rome and has worked as a photo-reporter since 2001. His work focuses on the stories of the marginalised and the invisible. He produced reportages in Africa and Asia, but it is in Latin America that Valerio has spent most of his life, choosing Argentina as his second country. He also collaborates with several Italian and international magazines.

In his first work he followed the Romani people and their world from Italy to the remote villages of Bosnia.

For 10 years he has been working on Encerrados, a photographic project on the living conditions of inmates in prisons across the South American continent. Encerrados was exhibited at the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan , at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome , and at the Bronx Documentary Center of New York . In 2015 Encerrados became a book published by Contrasto.

In 2017, after more than fourteen years, Valerio completed another long-term project about the lifecycle of a drug called “Paco”, widespread in some South America countries in the last twenty years. Paco: A Drug Story was exhibited in Istanbul by the International Green Cross and at the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan , where he reached the final of the Visa d'Or award. In 2017, Paco was published by Contrasto.

Encerrados and Paco have been awarded many international prizes, including the Sony World Photography Awards, the Picture of the Year prize, the Days Japan International Photojournalism Awards, and the Latin American Picture of the Year prize.

Prigionieri, his last project about the Italian remand prisons, was published in 2019 by Contrasto and exhibited at the Visa pour l'Image festival in Perpignan , where it reached the final of the Visa d'Or award. In 2020 Prigionieri won the Story News First Prize of the Istanbul Photo Award.