By Tony Gentile

I have never before seen an electoral campaign based solely on the appearance of the main political leaders on television talk shows.

After disappearing from the national stage for about a year former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi now enters the houses of Italians every day, more than once a day, on the screens broadcast by the biggest TV channels. The same is happening with the others leaders including outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti.

They invade our television sets so much that one of the most important Italian satirical show decided to produce a special edition of the program called “Gli Sgommati, elektion edition”, produced by Palomar and broadcast by Sky.

I went to the studio to follow a day of filming and was really impressed by the job they were doing and entertained by their funny gags.

Bersani, Monti, Berlusconi, and other Italian political leaders and VIP were transformed in to big rubber puppets operated by actors. Each character was moved by three actors. One moved the body, the head and the mouth. The second moved only the hands and the third the eyes, pupils and eyelids. They moved simultaneously.

At the beginning of the day the authors decided the theme of the episode and wrote the dialogue. Some actors played and recorded the voices of the characters and when the audio was ready the puppets went in to the studio, fully dressed and ready to film the new scene in front of a green screen. When all the scenes were ready a graphic operator filled in the right background and finalized the scene that would be edited by the director.

At the end of the day the result was a 30 minute funny satirical show in which all the political leaders were made fun of for what they said during the electoral campaign.

By Tony Gentile

A few months ago I exhibited my pictures during a photographic festival in Sicily. As I was hanging my work I was impressed by the images of another photographer which were displayed next to mine. They were war photos, in black and white, depicting World War II and I thought they were taken by an old photographer. But when I looked closer I saw that the photographer was young, and the pictures were taken only a year before. They were eerily similar to those shot during the 1940s, but the reportage concerned a re-enactment of the wartime landing of Allied forces in Anzio, about 60 km (37 miles) south of Rome.

Last week I glanced upon an announcement that the 69th anniversary of the Anzio landing was taking place, so I decided to go to take a look and cover this story. Unfortunately, due to the economic crisis, there were not many people involved in it this year but there were enough to make a picture story. While the rest of Italy was starting to celebrate the beginning of the Carnival season, these few war buffs were parading around in 70 year old army vehicles.

In the early hours of January 22, 1944, a convoy of 374 ships disembarked the 1st British Division on the coast just north of Anzio, while the 3rd American Division landed on the beaches near Nettuno (named Peter Beach and X-Ray Beach by the Allied forces). This was the beginning of Operation Shingle which had been so strenuously promoted by Winston Churchill.

Today, much is still being written and debate continues as to why the invading forces landing at Anzio did not press on to occupy Rome without delay. There were reportedly few German combat troops in the area, although a German armored division had been in the Anzio area up until only 48 hours before the landing, before being then transferred to Cassino. There is some controversy over whether the American general leading the invasion, General Mark Clark, had failed to charge ahead, possibly giving an opportunity for German Field Marshall Albert Kesselring to lock them into the beach head, as well as allowing German forces to escape to fight another day in his drive to liberate Rome.

After 69 years it is quite a spectacle to see as many as 40 military enthusiasts taking part in a re-enactment of the landing, proudly donning the uniforms of U.S., British, and German SS soldiers. They not only look like actors in a movie scene but also feel the history. And at the end of the day they appear to be just big boys who continue to play with toy soldiers.

It’s not the first time I have covered an international sport event and a soccer tournament. I was in Germany for the FIFA world cup in 2006, in Austria and Switzerland for Euro 2008 and now I’m covering Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine. Every time, I’ve followed Italy’s soccer team. It’s a interesting job but sometimes it can be repetitive. You spend about one month with the same people, your photo and text colleagues and the players. Everyday you cover a training session and news conference and travel around the country to cover the matches. C onstantly you have to try to find a different picture as well.
But sometimes something different turns up, in Poland we left soccer briefly and turned to history.

Like other national soccer teams, Italy also visited the Auschwitz former Nazi death camp in Oswiecim.

For me it was not the first time in Auschwitz, I had been there in 2000 to do a short movie with some students and I remember it as a shocking experience. Hundreds of people walking in the camp transform the area into a touristic place, but only when you concentrate your ear on what the guide says and see, for example, the shoes of thousands of babies killed by the SS a shiver runs down your spine, you start to feel part of the history, especially if the guide is a survivor of the Holocaust.

And this happens every time you go there. It’s understood that normally photojournalists can be cynical and that’s quite true, but Auschwitz is the one place where you cannot forgot what happened just 60 years ago.
This held true even for the younger players who are often not interested in what happens outside their world.

But besides the personal interest, I also had to work and try to get good photos to tell the story. When they arrived through Auschwitz’s notorious gate under the sign “Arbeit Macht Frei” instead of concentrating my attention on single players, as did many others photographers, I took a wide picture including the iconic death skull at the entrance of the camp.

Later, I also took some pictures to illustrate the concentration of a group of players as they listened to the guide. Then I decided not to disturb them during their visit and moved to the second camp of Birkenau.

Birkenau is bigger and I thought that probably I could take some better pictures, hoping that the players would walk alone and I might find a nice situation for some strong images of single players. The main feature of Birkenau is the rail track, “the ramp”, in which the deportees arrived and where they were separated from their family. Many of them were killed immediately afterward.

This is where I saw the controversial player Antonio Cassano seated alone on the rail track and went there to shoot a picture of him in deep thought probably, with that shiver running down his spine. The situation was quite perfect, he was alone on the track and with the notorious gate behind him. I saw this scene for a few seconds. Soon many people arrived behind him, so it was impossible for other photographers to shoot the same picture.

A couple of days later, I came back to Auschwitz for another visit to give honor to the 1,5 million people killed by one of the most violent dictators of modern times. It was then that I took these black and white pictures, my own way of reflecting on this extraordinary atmosphere.

Tony Gentile