Zagreb will feature the photo exhibition “From Afar” by Alessandro Penso. The Rome-born photographer focused his lenses on the stories of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants reaching Europe after long and exhausting journeys through Greece and across the Balkans. The show, on display at the Lauba gallery, has been organised by the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb, in cooperation with the Tolerance Festival, within a programme launched in 2015 and dedicated to the themes of immigration, xenophobia and violence. In 2014 Penso was awarded the first prize by World Press Photo, in the category ‘General News Singles’, for a picture taken in a refugee centre in Sophia, Bulgaria. Through his photos, Penso documented the faces and the journeys of migrants, as well as how the different acts of welcome are perceived through the eyes of those who flee from wars and conflict areas. His photos are very powerful and have a great narrative force and artistic level, reinterpreting the iconography of classical art and transposing it in a contemporary perspective: the sacred and loving bond which unites a Syrian mother to her child, or the silent scene in the countryside where a tree, the symbol of man and life, becomes the border separating two countries. The exhibition is part of a global project by the Italian photographer who, in December 2015, was awarded Time Magazine’s prize for the Photo Story of the Year, for having depicted over many years the full drama of refugees and migrants in Europe.