Stories

Join our journalist Gianluca Dotti and our photographer Settimio Benedusi in their journey around the world to meet all the rare people that decided to open up and let us in their lives. Listen to their stories and to find out what rarity means to them.

Nicola

Nicola showed us how looking ahead and writing a book he overcame the difficulties of living with beta thalassaemia, a blood disorder that can have a significant emotional and psychological impact on one’s life.

Thomas

Thomas is a small, sweet, and lively child living with determination and courage his young life with Alpha Mannosidosis.

Camillo

Camillo is a high school student, dreaming of becoming a lawyer or an economist. During his childhood he was diagnosed with beta thalassaemia major, a severe anaemia, also known as Mediterranean anaemia.

Konstantinos

Konstantinos is a young boy who has just come of age. He has been diagnosed with nephropathic cystinosis, an ultra-rare, progressive, multisystemic disease that usually appears in the first few months of life.

Gianluca Dotti

Gianluca is a science journalist, graduated in Matter Physics with two master’s degrees in communication and journalism. 

As a freelance journalist, he is an author and contributor for several media outlets, including Wired Italia, the main Italian economic newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Forbes, Mediaset, Famiglia Cristiana, Zanichelli, Mondadori, DeAgostini, as well as local and specialized newspapers. He had the honour of interviewing Nobel laureates Serge Haroche and Steven Chu, as well as the most famous Italian science communicator Piero Angela. 

He also moderates conferences and scientific events and has been a guest on Italian and Swiss radio and television broadcasts. Driven by his passion for science and the desire to make it accessible to the public, he carried out projects on science popularization with the universities of Naples, Insubria, Bologna, Modena, the French and Swiss Embassy in Italy. 

Settimio Benedusi

Settimio Benedusi is an Italian professional photographer and journalist. He focuses on fashion, advertising and portrait photography, and works for all the major national publishers. He has been involved in photo documentation reports projects in Uganda for CBM Italy and in Haiti for NPH. 

As Artistic Director of the San Felice sul Panaro Photographic Festival, he raised awareness about countries affected by the earthquake. He is also a visiting lecturer at the IED European Institute of Design and at the IULM University in Milan. 

In 2018, he founded the “Popular Photography Collective” RICORDI STAMPATI, introducing the concept of the Printed Photographic Portrait, making personal portraits accessible to everybody. In his photographic work, he loves condensing the infinite characteristics of a person into one small gesture. He defines himself as somebody who never gives up.