Alfredo Bini: Monlan Festival

Alfredo Bini has always taken photographs, and found his own personal form of expression in reportage photography. He concentrates on documenting stories of social relevance, and hopes that his images increases public awareness on these issues.

I thought of featuring Alfredo's work of the Monlan festival at the time when China is publicly positioning the Panchen Lama as the legitimate representative of Tibetan Buddhism, and to undermine the popularity of Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama.

Monlam is also known as The Great Prayer Festival, falls on 4th-11th day of the 1st Tibetan month. It is greatest religious festival in Tibet, when thousands of monks gather to perform religious rituals at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa.

Alfredo's reportage "Water and Land in Sahel the case of Burkina Faso", won the title of "Runner-Up" in the "Travel Photo Of The Year", run by The Independent and Wanderlust, and has won 2nd place in the IPA Awards (NYC) for the Political category as well as 2 mentions of honor in the Environmental and Feature Story categories.

His Transmigrations reportage has been published as cover story by the Corriere della Sera Magazine and Alias (Il Manifesto), and has also been published by the BBC and Avvenire.