"I hadn't planned to photograph migrants, but I kept encountering them on every trip. They were the ones who came towards me." The fate of photojournalist Giulio Piscitelli is that of the curious, of those who observe without ideological filters. At just 35 years old, he has produced for Contrasto the book and exhibition Harraga. In viaggio bruciando le frontiere, which can be visited at Forma Meravigli in Milan until 24 March. He himself stresses that the protagonists of this work — the fruit of seven years of travel — are the children, women and men fleeing poverty and war along African and Balkan routes, with the dream of Europe. To them he dedicates his victory of the Premio Ponchielli 2016, established in memory of Italy's first photo editor, Amilcare Ponchielli.

'My real beginning in in-depth reportage. Without a fixer, welcomed by those Tunisian migrants with respect. I shared two weeks of waiting with them, a false start, two homes chosen by the passeur, the fear of leaving and finally 20 hours crossing from Tunisia to Lampedusa.' April 2011, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'We were in Djerba, at night, on the first attempt to leave. But twenty of us were arrested on the way from the safe house, where the passeur had gathered us, to the beach. I shot with a very long exposure, unaware of the result.' March 2011, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'These Eritreans fleeing through Sudan towards Libya are among the most forgotten migrants. The vehicle they were travelling in had broken down and was about to set off again. That is why they are running. The Sudanese and Libyan armies are said to have reached an agreement with the EU to stop these migrations, but in practice the human trafficking continues. So many sums of money paid for exactly what?' May 2014, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'Here is a wall erected by the EU against migrants in the Spanish enclave of Melilla on Moroccan territory. The migrants at the top are waiting to jump. Some are talking with the Spanish guards. Sometimes they jump en masse, injuring themselves badly in the process, to distract them. And often, in breach of the Dublin agreements, they are immediately sent back, where the Moroccan police beat them to discourage them from trying again. An illegal practice known to everyone, yet it goes on.' August 2014, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'This Sudanese girl, Sohora, is in a building in Tripoli with her baby girl, born during a crossing to Italy, and hundreds of other refugees. For two months she and the child were imprisoned in Abu Salim. Libya has several detention centres for "illegal immigrants", all funded by Italy and the EU after the fall of Gaddafi, where violence is committed and there is no healthcare.' May 2014, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto, exclusively from the book for LifeGate

'In 2015, among the Syrians on the Balkan route there were very many families. Here, at Idomeni, another barrier was erected between Macedonia and Greece. Some of them had to turn back and are now wandering around Athens, already exhausted by the crisis.' December 2015, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'Still at Idomeni, a girl fainted while trying to cross the Greek-Macedonian border. At one point they allowed passage only to Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, but other exiles are also fleeing war zones. Somalis live in a permanent conflict. And anyone who has lost their documents has no way out.' December 2015, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'On the Balkan route the EU demonstrated its inability to think in a communal way, its poverty of decision-making and its shortcomings in managing migration.' Idomeni, December 2015, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'More Syrian families in Serbia. They hope to enter Hungary, where yet another barrier against migrants has been erected.' July 2015, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto, exclusively from the book for LifeGate

'This family has just fled clashes between police and migrants on the border between Serbia and Hungary. The police officers, in riot gear, used tear gas against these civilians.' September 2015, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto, exclusively from the book for LifeGate

'This Hungarian bus will take the migrants to a refugee camp to register them. If the civil right to travel were granted, these blockades would no longer exist.' September 2015, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'The unofficial camp at Calais, in France, dismantled in October, was a true city in its own right, with its informal shops. It had existed since 1994 — it was not an emergency or a crisis, as it was described. In Jordan the Zaatari camp was formed, where they even sell wedding dresses. Refugees need normality to survive.' November 2015, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'After a car bomb exploded, the Iraqi army attempts to evacuate a building in Mosul. Suddenly these people must leave their homes. Perhaps they will set out on the Balkan route.' December 2016, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

'On the horizon thousands more people are waiting to board with traffickers to flee the fighting. The Iraqi army is liberating Mosul from Isis, but has not created a humanitarian corridor. They board on the River Tigris.' December 2016, copyright Giulio Piscitelli/contrasto

Giulio Piscitelli during the installation of the exhibition Harraga. In viaggio bruciando le frontiere at the Forma Meravigli foundation. Milan, 22 February 2017, copyright Francesca Lancini

Piscitelli, a self-taught photographer inside the story with discretion

"After graduating in Communication Sciences, I didn't think I'd become a photographer," Piscitelli says, making no attempt to hide a trace of tension amid boxes and frames to be hung on the eve of the Milan opening. "The need to understand drove me to take pictures. I'm self-taught, and then I started studying properly. In 2010 I wanted to investigate the extremely high levels of pollution that are making the population of Kosovo ill, but I came back with lots of photos and no story. There was no structure. I trained in the field, even though it's important to have technical and journalistic grounding."

Piscitelli, born in Naples in 1981, is known for having boarded a migrant boat in the Mediterranean Sea, paying a trafficker (passeur) just as the migrants did, and risking his life. "Everyone asks me about that episode. They wanted me to go on television to tell my own personal experience, but I refused. I don't want to talk about myself. I want to talk about them!" he says, pointing to the image of the boat crammed with young Tunisians: one hundred and twenty men in ten metres.

With the migrants, Piscitelli "harraga" — an Arabic, metaphorical term for the act of those who "burn the borders, that is, cross them, clamber over them and ardently dream." He shoots in the Sahara Desert, in Libyan prisons funded by the European Union, in front of walls erected specifically against exiles such as those in Melilla (Spain) and Idomeni (Greece), in the twenty-year-old tent city of Calais, in France, recently dismantled, on the shores of the Greek islands and of Lampedusa where he himself landed, in the heart of the wars in Iraq and Syria that are forcing hundreds of thousands of people to abandon their homes. The desperation on the faces and the running through bombed-out cities call to mind those of our grandparents and great-grandparents during the Second World War.

"Let us guarantee the civil right to travel"

Pain is the common thread running through this account told in often vivid colours, perhaps so as not to forget that those suffering are human beings who are intensely alive and courageous. The book published by Contrasto enriches the photographer's perspective. With clear writing and the help of maps by Philippe Rekacewicz, the well-known cartographer of the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, Piscitelli manages to summarise the contemporary phenomenon of migration. He speaks to us of human and civil rights violated with the blessing of the authorities, of crimes — such as human trafficking — that would not exist without a specific context, of Arab winters rather than Arab springs, of a repeated yet failed European approach.

"And yet there is a solution," he states calmly, before returning to the installation. "Offering migrants, no longer treating them as irregular or undocumented, a temporary but long-term travel document. People would no longer be stuck as they are in Calais. They could travel, work and avoid falling into illegality and hardship. Populism would lose ground." Revolutionary? Simplistic? Absolutely not for someone who is inside the story, treading its most hidden paths, with discretion.