It is a beautiful book—Nomades—born of a malignant fever. The fever that seized Franco Zecchin seven years ago. A pioneer in photographing the crimes of the Sicilian Mafia, this 46-year-old Italian bowed out of media fame to share in the wanderings of nomadic peoples. With wind in his sails and his Leica slung over his shoulder, Zecchin slipped into the interstices of the human condition across the globe, running through dunes and tropical forests, Asian archipelagos and boreal tundras, during a dozen long journeys. He immersed himself completely among the 7 million itinerant nomads still living in all latitudes, with no other contract than to change space and time in order to rediscover what is essential. 

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Chant. Tuaregs of Mali, Mongols of the Central Asian steppes, Inuit of Quebec... Nothing less than eye-catching for a photographer who detests exoticism. Ultimately, however, the book that marks the end of Franco Zecchin's journey is like a spellbinding chant. One that rocked humanity's childhood. Possession is dangerous when you are constantly on the move to adapt to natural resources. Nomads therefore base their wealth on being and relationships, while sedentary people tend to favor having. But we must not idealize them either. That is as dangerous as despising them. It is to freeze something that is alive. 

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The son of a railway worker, this native of Milan studied nuclear physics before trying his hand at photography, encouraged by his girlfriend at the time, a journalist in Palermo. He was the first to systematically photograph the killings carried out by the Sicilian mafia. This risky commitment to the anti-Mafia struggle, which lasted eighteen years, earned him a place at the Magnum agency. It was an opportunity to get a change of scenery by traveling around Eastern Europe to report on the effects of pollution. But to truly shake off his label as a Mafia photographer, Zecchin opted for the sandy expanses of the Algerian-Malian border, among the Tuaregs. He brought back photos of biblical women, disheveled children, and Kalashnikovs pointed at the Malian army... and the endless desert. Then came a series of trips, partly funded by UNESCO, meticulously prepared with anthropologists, but always improvised in the field because chance is the best guide in the nourishing emptiness of this “elsewhere.” 

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Complicity. Zecchin showed up everywhere with his friendly Italian face. I put out my feelers. I observed the little things. I cultivated anticipation, without taking many photos, always in black and white. I never used flash, which alters reality too much. A respectful complicity, carefully distanced. I never forgot that I was just a stranger passing through, like the nomads themselves. Under his lens, the “chicken thieves” regained their royalty, because Zecchin is not one of those image hunters who narcissistically promote themselves through their raids.