Selected Work
Peru, 2024 · ongoing · B&W
Cusco · Sacred Valley · Queros
In the Sacred Valley and in the territories of Queros, between climate change and the resilience of Quechua communities.
Kenya, 2025 · ongoing · Color
Mau Forest · Narok County
Between the Mau Forest and Narok County, the contradictions of environmental policies and their impact on Ogiek and Maasai communities.
About
Molo, Kenya, 2025
Giordano Simoncini is a documentary photographer whose work focuses on the intersections of social inequalities, environmental transformations and land rights. His long-term projects take him across Latin America and Africa, where he investigates the relationships between land, identity, and power through sustained fieldwork.
His approach combines anthropological research with a strong visual focus, aiming to document forms of life and systems of relation that often remain unseen. He studied philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome, where he also began developing his photographic practice.
His work has been published by international outlets and magazines, including The Guardian, L'Oeil de la Photographie, and The Pictorial List.
Press & Recognition
2025
Runner-up, Landscape — The Photography Foundation × Leica
Exhibition at Leica Store, London
2024
Finalist, Project and Portfolio — Eyeshot Magazine Open Call
2024
Urbanphotoawards — Finalist, International Contest, category Projects & Portfolios
Work published in URBAN Unveils the City and its Secrets #10
2024
Life Framer — Winner, International Contest 'Youth'
Selected among the 20 winning photographs of the Life Framer 'Youth' International Contest
Contact
Available for documentary work, editorial assignments, exhibition projects, and collaborations with NGOs and humanitarian organizations.
Email giordano.simoncini@icloud.com ↗ Instagram @giordano_simoncini ↗Peru · 2024–ongoing · B&W
Bajo las Nubes is a long-term project initiated in 2024 in the Peruvian region of Cusco, between the Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River and the more remote areas of the Andean highlands, within the territory of the Queros community. The work explores how Quechua communities inhabit high-altitude environments — between 4,400 and 5,000 meters above sea level — within a landscape increasingly shaped by the effects of climate change, where glacier retreat, the gradual drying of pastures, and the disruption of agricultural cycles are placing growing pressure on ways of life rooted in a millennia-old balance between humans, animals, and land.
Within this context, Pachamama (Mother Earth) does not appear as an abstract idea, but as a lived cosmology in which material and spiritual dimensions are inseparable. Land, animals, bodies, and natural elements are not resources, but parts of a single vital system. Rendered in black and white, Bajo las Nubes traces a condition of balance that persists, yet is constantly under pressure.
Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River, Cusco, Peru. A mother and her son take part in the Compadres festival, a celebration that expresses the value of friendship within the community and its relationship with Pachamama. The goose-feather ornament held in the child's arms is associated, in local ritual practices, with the bond between the human and animal worlds and the cycles of nature.
Sacred Valley of the Urubamba River, Cusco, Peru. Two llamas remain in close contact in a high-altitude pasture. In the Peruvian Andes, these domesticated animals are an integral part of Quechua pastoral life and, like the communities who raise them, are increasingly affected by ongoing ecological changes.