ZEKE Magazine: Spring 2023.2

PROFILE: COVER PHOTOGRAPHER
Cinzia Canneri
Documenting Women’s Bodies as
Battlefield
By Daniela Cohen
Born in Italy, Cinzia Canneri started
photography at a young age, but her
20-year career as a psychologist in a
hospital and raising her two daughters
prevented her from continuing. Yet photography
stayed in her mind and heart, and once
her daughters were older, Canneri resumed
her art, becoming a photojournalist.
Her first project, “Like two wings,” in
2016 documented the effects of asbestos on
workers and their families, who she said,
“breathe the dust of asbestos in the house
because of the clothes of their husbands….”
Published in the New York Times Lens Blog,
this work won two awards.
Canneri then decided to use her privilege
to highlight social issues in places previously
colonized by her country. This, together
with her desire to understand why most
Eritrean refugees arriving in Italy were men,
led her to travel to the border between
Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2017. Initially, she
documented women fleeing Eritrea, which
she called “the second worst dictatorship
after North Korea.” Canneri named their
immigration experience “the still journey,”
explaining that women’s journeys can last
up to 20 years or even a lifetime because
they decide to remain in Africa, often at the
border, because they have children and are
waiting for their husbands.
Following the invasion of Tigray by the
Ethiopian federal army supported by the
Eritrean military forces and Amhara militia
in November 2020, Canneri expanded her
focus to include Tigrinya women, documenting
the sexual violence perpetrated
by the Eritrean army against both Eritrean
and Tigrinya women escaping to Sudan or
Addis Ababa.
“Sexual violence was used against
Eritrean women because they escaped
that country, against Tigrinya women
because they wanted to exterminate them,”
Canneri said. “Systematic targeting of
women’s bodies has come to light as being
a strategy during war.”
She said that sexual violence is also
prevalent in peace time, because of the
paternalistic culture women are living in.
There is “cultural acceptance of this violence
against women’s bodies because they
are vulnerable, because they cannot speak
out for themselves,” said Canneri.
Canneri’s work is a way to give these
women a voice. “Even though words are
not spoken, … there’s such a strength of
voice about what is taking place for these
women in a time of war, a time of peace,
yet both are so violent,” she said. “When
we’re looking at the Eritrean women
and also the Tigrinya women, there is no
division between ‘our women’ and ‘their
women’. They are women and … sex is
being used as a tool to punish.”
For Canneri, it is important to also
document these women’s strength, as they
raise their children in this context and support
each other across ethnicities. In one of
her photos, Eritrean and Tigrinya women
are seen praying together for their children.
In the cover photo for this issue of
ZEKE, a woman who recently arrived at
Um Rakuba refugee camp in Sudan with
her two children holds a religious pendant
from her husband left behind, telling
Canneri, “It is the only object I have of my
past life.”
Canneri wants to raise awareness that
true peace needs to go beyond political
agreements to respect human rights, with
the first step recognizing the victims and
the sexual violence using women’s bodies
as a battlefield.
ZEKE
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