Alex Majoli began to show a keen interest in photography at the age of eleven. Four years later, in 1986, he joined the f45 studio in Ravenna, working alongside Daniele Casadio.

© Alex Majoli / Magnum Photos

In 1989, at the age of eighteen, he became a full-time photojournalist and joined the Grazia Neri agency the year after, where he remained until 1995. In 1992 and 1993, he traveled to Yugoslavia several times to document the conflict. In the following years, he covered all major events in Kosovo and Albania.

In 1994 he undertook a photo essay on the insane asylum on the island of Leros in Greece. This notoriously brutal institution had been designed to host those deemed hopeless cases by the country’s psychiatric hospitals. Incidentally, patients were housed in what used to be political prison. Alex Majoli documented the closing down of the asylum, an event that was made possible thanks to the influence of the anti-psychiatric movement led by Dr. Franco Basaglia from Trieste. This project was completed with the publication of Leros in 1999.
In 1995 he went to South America for several months, photographing a variety of subjects and finding the groundwork for his personal project Requiem in Samba. He began experimenting with cinematography in 1998.
Majoli became a full member of Magnum Photos in 2001. In 2003 he received the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for Photojournalism.

Today, he continues to follow and document various worldwide conflicts for several major magazines including Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, and National Geographic. In 2004 he was awarded the Feature Photography Award from the Overseas Press Club. He was also distinguished as Magazine Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association.

The same year, he collaborated with Thomas Dworzak, Paolo Pellegrin, and Ilkka Uimonen to produce the installation Off Broadway, which was shown in Soho, New York. He also covered both the Democratic National Convention in Boston and the Republican National Convention in New York, just a couple of months before the American presidential elections. From this work, he compiled a series of high-contrast portraits of voters in the book One Vote.

Alex Majoli is currently working on Hotel Marinum, a large-scale personal project begun in 1997, which explores harbor cities in various parts of the world.

Awards (selection):

2002 Pesaresi Prize, Festival Foto.
2003 Infinity Award for Photojournalism from the International Center of Photography.
2004 Magazine Photographer of the Year from the Best of Journalism Contest, National Press Photographers Association.
2004 Feature Photography Award from the Overseas Press Club.
2004 Honourable Mention from the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.
2002-2004 Several citations at the Picture of the Year International Award.

Exhibitions (selection):

1997 Slave, Casa do Olodum, Bahia, Brazil.
1999 Leros, Galleria Immagina, Venice, Italy.
2000 Leros, Ospedale Psichiatrico Paolo Pini, Milan, Italy.
2004 Leros, VeryTrolley Gallery, London, UK.

Publications (selection):

Leros. West Zone, Venice, 1999;
Trolley Ltd. and Phaidon, London, 2002.
One Vote. Filigranes Editions, Paris, 2004.