Photojournalist Mamo to document war's impact on children in Beirut
Award-winning Italian photojournalist Alessio Mamo is travelling to Beirut to document children wounded in the ongoing conflict, highlighting a crisis that continues to shape European migration and civic consciousness.
Italian photojournalist Alessio Mamo is preparing to travel to Beirut to document the physical toll of recent Israeli attacks on children. The assignment continues a career dedicated to showing European audiences the human cost of regional conflicts that drive migration to the continent's shores.
Mamo's focus on social injustice stems from a specific European turning point. Sent to cover the October 3, 2013 shipwreck off Lampedusa that killed more than 250 Eritrean migrants, he realised the camera's power to document post-conflict trauma. He subsequently shifted his work away from pure aesthetics toward the realities of refugees in his native Sicily.
This approach led to a project with journalist Marta Bellingreri at the Médecins Sans Frontières Al-Mowasah hospital in Amman. Mamo spent six months in Jordan documenting patients from Iraq, Gaza, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. The project required visiting the facility three times a week to properly chronicle the long-term treatments.
Among the patients was Manal, a 12-year-old girl who suffered severe burns to her arms and face from a missile explosion in Kirkuk. Mamo’s portrait of Manal—showing her wearing a mask for five hours a day to shield her skin from light—won a World Press Photo award in 2018. Mamo remains in contact with her, visiting the now 19-year-old in Kirkuk last year where she lives with her uncle.
For European readers, these long-term medical realities underscore the enduring instability in neighbouring regions. Mamo, who recently became a father, argues that maintaining public awareness of children harmed in war is vital to preventing societal indifference. He attempts to channel his anger over civilian suffering into his work, hoping to build what he calls a "critical mass" of awareness.
"The moment we stop, and allow them to go unheard, we will live in a world where nobody cares about the suffering of the less fortunate," Mamo said. His upcoming work in Beirut aims to keep that awareness alive as the conflict generates a new wave of child casualties.
