I'm Francesco Grigori Di Bene — photographer and documentary filmmaker, based in Rome.
I started shooting in 2010. What I do hasn't changed much since: I go somewhere and I stay longer than the job strictly requires. Very little of what matters shows up in the first five minutes — not at a mountain rally, not in a stable at four in the morning, not in a boardroom.
I grew up around a stable. My grandfather was a shepherd, and at school the other kids called me "the shepherd's son" — they didn't mean it kindly. It's probably why I photograph work, and the people who do it: what a job does to a pair of hands, and what it does to a family.
Two long-term projects run alongside the commissioned work. Chronogenics is a portrait series on genetic memory and identity, built in triptychs. Of Blood, Milk and Sky documents pastoral cultures one country at a time; the Italian chapter is finished, and the first volume exists as a dummy.
On assignment I've worked with RCS, Sky and the Federazione Motociclistica Italiana, on documentaries, campaigns and branded storytelling, in Italy and abroad. I don't treat commissioned work as a separate skill: the attention that finds a face in a mountain village is the same one that finds it in an office.
Before photography I worked as a graphic designer. It's why I design and typeset my own books.
If that's the kind of eye you need — write to me.