Federico Vespignani LA DISTANCIA

Born and raised in Italy, Federico Vespignani has long been fascinated with Mexico and Central America. After graduating from Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome in 2013 with a degree in photography and fine art, Vespignani worked as a freelance photojournalist for publications such as The New York Times and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. In 2015, he traveled to El Salvador in search of a story that wasn’t about the nation’s ongoing gang violence, which he felt had already been covered thoroughly by other photojournalists.

In a local El Salvadorian newspaper, he read an article about the forensic anthropologist Israel Ticas, who searches for missing people. He spent the following two months trailing Ticas as he exhumed bodies in the jungle. Vespignani’s willingness to go anywhere earned him the nickname “todoterreno journalist,” or “all-terrain journalist.”

The resulting series—which includes dark images of mass graves, skulls and Ticas on the job—is titled “La Distancia.” “Ticas is very concerned with the victims, and this affected him a lot during his daily life,” Vespignani says. “He explained to me that he has to keep the right distance from these things.”

Vespignani had to keep distance as well. “Once we found a 16-year-old girl beheaded,” he says. “It made me sick. Photography is a kind of protection for me against these things.”

Although some editors have declared the photographs too violent to publish, Vespignani plans to continue the work. He recently received a grant from Il Giornale to photograph a story on enforced disapperances in Central America—he'll work with forensic anthropologists in Guatemala and Honduras for that series—and hopes to create short films along with still images.

—Brienne Walsh

Photos © Federico Vespignani federicovespignani.com