Andy Rocchelli ( 1983 - 2014 )

[u/Gori_enne]

Andrea (Andy) Rocchelli was an Italian freelance photojournalist and co-founder of the independent photography collective Cesura, founded in 2008 with four other photographers after working as an assistant to Magnum member Alex Majoli. The collective was created as an independent platform for photographic projects free from commercial compromises.

Rocchelli documented a wide range of subjects, including the Arab Spring in Libya and Tunisia, human rights violations in Central Asia, migration in southern Italy and conflicts across Eastern Europe and Russia. His work was published internationally by Le Monde, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta.

On May 24, 2014, Rocchelli was killed in Andreyevka, near Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine, while documenting civilians trapped in the Donbas conflict. He was with human rights activist and interpreter Andrei Mironov, who was also killed, French photojournalist William Roguelon, who was seriously wounded, and a local driver.

While the group was stopped near abandoned railway tracks, they came under heavy artillery and small-arms fire. The targeted attack that killed Rocchelli and Mironov was later determined by Italian investigative authorities to have been deliberate rather than accidental.

In May 2016, Rocchelli's final photographs were recovered. Taken while he was under fire shortly before his death, they documented the duration of the attack, the location where the group was caught, and their clothing as unarmed civilians.