Crisis in Italy: documenting coronavirus

As Covid-19 started to spread across the world, embattled Northern Italy emerged as the site of the largest outbreak in Europe. With a healthcare system in crisis, medics spoke of the heart-rending choices they were forced to make, deciding which of the patients in the overloaded hospitals would be given access to the intensive care beds and ventilators that were in such short supply.

Published in The New York Times, Fabio Bucciarelli's powerful, intimate images, shot on hospital wards and inside coronavirus patients' homes, brought the reality of these life-or-death decisions into stark relief.

Experienced conflict photographer Fabio, who has spent the past 10 years covering wars and their consequences in Iraq, Syria and Libya, and most recently won second prize in the General News category of the 2020 World Press Awards for images of protests in Chile, this time turned his lens towards the battle taking place in his own country.

More than empty streets

As Italy went into lockdown, the main visuals were of masked residents and eerily empty streets. "I had seen images of empty spaces and clear water in Venice, but there were not a lot of images from inside Covid-19," says Fabio. "There was a story missing there," adds Francesca.

After contacting Red Cross volunteers in the stricken region of Lombardy, the pair were given permission to join emergency callouts to suspected Covid-19 patients in the city of Bergamo. With Fabio on assignment for The New York Times and Francesca working on packages for multiple news channels, the two ventured into what was then the epicentre of the outbreak, to document victims in their homes, hospitals and, in some cases, makeshift mortuaries.

"I witnessed the collapse of a system," says Francesca. "As Italians, we are used to having a very good public health system. It's shocking when that is not working any more. It was not only a matter of doctors in the ICU saying: 'We have to make choices – who is the person that can be saved?' I saw the same scene many times – reaching a place and meeting a patient who needed to be hospitalised, but could not be."

The safety and ethics of covering Covid-19

On arriving at a patient's home, the volunteers introduced Fabio and Francesca to family members, so they could ask permission to shoot inside. "Most of the time we were received very warmly," says Francesca. "They understood that Italy was a few weeks in front of the rest of Europe, and that showing this was very important."

Then began a detailed safety protocol, taught to them by the Red Cross, to ensure they protected themselves and others from the spread of the virus. Only after donning full white body suits, masks, goggles and two pairs of gloves, could they enter someone's home. After leaving, everything needed to be carefully removed, and either disposed of or sanitised – including camera equipment.

One story, two mediums

The pair, who have previously collaborated on stories about migrants at the US border, travelled together around Bergamo while working on separate stories for different media outlets. "I'm a filmmaker and Fabio is a photojournalist, so sometimes it works really well – with a little bit of compromise," says Francesca. "You need to make sure you don't get in the other's frame."

Francesca was shooting on a Canon EOS C300 (now succeeded by the Canon EOS C300 Mark III), her filmmaking stalwart for several years, which has even survived being submerged in a Mexican river. She paired it with a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. "I was covering news with the eye of a documentary filmmaker," she says. "Doing news can help you to understand the issue – I see news and documentaries as things that can work together. I come from photography, so I couldn't approach any type of coverage without a good frame, without finding the right light or trying to look for the poetry."

Fabio, who has been shooting with the Canon EOS R for six months, found its small size helped him cover the story more sensitively. "If the story is personal and intimate, I think that a smaller camera, a mirrorless, can help you," he says. Some 90% of his images were shot at his preferred focal length with a Canon RF 35mm F1.8 Macro IS STM lens. "The Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM lens was good for small spaces," he adds. "If you're in hospitals and houses, a wider angle can be useful."

The power of images

Fabio and Francesca's footage and photographs of the outbreak gave a glimpse into the devastation unfolding inside Italy. Published and broadcast in mid-March, just weeks after Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), they served as a prescient warning of the bleak realities faced by overwhelmed health systems.

"Italy quickly became one of the world's worst places for Covid-19," says Francesca. "We produced some of the first visuals of Covid-19 patients, their relatives and the ICU teams, which helped to inform the public."

"I started working on the story to give people more information to try to understand the disease," adds Fabio. "People are suffering from this epidemic, but this enemy is invisible. I'm trying to help people open their eyes to this crisis and see how dangerous this virus can be."