One Thousand Faces of Eating Disorders

"One Thousand Faces of Eating Disorders" is a photographic project aiming to break down most of the false myths about the world of Eating Disorders. Past and current misconceptions on ED prevent them from being effectively understood, thus generating feelings of loneliness and abandonment in people struggling with them. With this project, attention will be paid to the versatility of eating disorders, underlining and encouraging a reflection on how they can affect anyone, regardless of gender and age. Eating Disorders are often mistakenly associated exclusively with young female subjects, characterized by severe malnutrition and emaciation: on the contrary, it must be pointed out that also male subjects, women and men of mature age, and even children often are affected by them.

One Thousand Faces of Eating Disorders



is a photographic project aiming to break down most of the false myths about the world of Eating Disorders. Past and current misconceptions on ED prevent them from being effectively understood, thus generating feelings of loneliness and abandonment in people struggling with them. With this project, attention will be paid to the versatility of eating disorders, underlining and encouraging a reflection on how they can affect anyone, regardless of gender and age.

Eating Disorders are often mistakenly associated exclusively with young female subjects, characterized by severe malnutrition and emaciation: on the contrary, it must be pointed out that also male subjects, women and men of mature age, and even children often are affected by them.

Furthermore, the range of Eating Disorders is extremely heterogeneous and cannot just be reduced to anorexia: Binge Eating Disorder, Bulimia Nervosa, Orthorexia, Bigoressia are just some of the many variants that make up the ED complex universe.

Due to social stigma and the lack of proper recognition, people struggling with a form of ED do not feel entitled to ask for help and seek support from professional therapists – leading to serious consequences and avoiding early diagnoses (essential for the healing process to be faster and therefore effective).

There is a clear discrepancy between the number of people suffering from ED (in Italy the number of cases of subjects affected by ED is ca. 3 million) and a general lack of knowledge about the problem (the statistics show that in Italy approx. 5/10% of the subjects with Anorexia and ca. 10% of the ones with Bulimia are men; and that in Bigorexia male patients are prevalent).

The crucial element affecting the inconsistency relies on how the topic has been addressed so far – what must be questioned is the form of communication, that is generally used when discussing about Eating Disorders - e.g. images of naked female bodies strongly affected by the disease, which focus only on aesthetic elements, not considering that beyond that body there is a person with emotions and thoughts.

For this reason it is imperative to think about a new way of speaking about Eating Disorders – what they are and what they cause in people affected by them.

The project "One Thousand Faces of Eating Disorders" aims at raising awareness on the need to look at the image to see beyond that image: to understand that Eating Disorders are different, multifaceted and multiform but, above all, they are insidious and often kept secret, hidden from the world because unspeakable and misunderstood. Eating Disorder affects many more people than we know and imagine: our colleague, classmate, favourite actress, our neighbour or the guy sitting next to us on the bus - even if at the first sight they might seem bright, healthy, successful, even enviable...

People who spontaneously decide to take part in the project are reached by the photographer, who meet them all over Italy. In order to make participants and their stories the authentic character of the project, every subject is totally left free to decide the main elements of her/his portrait photograph: how to be shot (e.g. full-length figure or just a detail), the location of the shooting, which they mainly relate to their story, and if they want to include something or someone in the picture (e.g. key people supporting them). Moreover, in order to make the photographs intensively resonate with the personal story of the characters, each participant personally writes a caption that will be associated with her/his pictures.

The goal of the Project, therefore, is to ask those who are struggling – or have struggled in the past – with an Eating Disorder to talk about themselves and their battle, through the photos and a short caption that describes his/her own unique experience.

"One Thousand Faces of Eating Disorders" is the attempt to connect delicately, those who are living or have lived through the nightmare of an Eating Disorder with the world outside, by creating a link made of images, people and words.

-ONGOING PROJECT-