"One Life", the life of a great Italian photographer in Kenya, enclosed and unleashed in that of thousands of African animals, a symbiosis that is both a work of art and an elective affinity.
Federico Veronesi's life has always been linked to nature and the highest expression of purity and humanity he achieves in the animal kingdom of East Africa. If today the 48-year-old from Milan, who has been living in Nairobi for more than 20 years, is among the most internationally appreciated naturalist photographers, he also owes this to the passion transmitted by his parents.

"My father, who, like my mother, loved travelling and fixing them with magnificent slides, took me to Kenya for the first time when I was seven years old,' Veronesi tells us. 'For me, who already loved the animal world and fed on documentaries, it was a thunderbolt. Some time passed, however, before I was able to combine photography and love for felines and herbivores forever'.
Veronesi graduated in economics from Milan's Bocconi University and seemed set on a career of consequence, but Africa was there calling, with the famous song Karen Blixen wrote about, inviting you to introduce her to yours.

'It had been almost 20 years since my first Kenya,' the Italian photographer recounts, 'and the opportunity arose to do an internship in an embassy abroad. My university friends were competing for a destination in line with the aspirations of a recent graduate: London, New York... when I saw Nairobi on the list, I had no doubts'.
Veronesi spends three months in the Kenyan capital and as soon as he can, he shoots, in the double sense of the word, in the national parks. So much so that on his return to Italy, after his civil service, he would like to exploit some contacts to find a job in the African country.

'The attraction was strong, you couldn't ignore it,' admits Federico. 'On the other side was the profession, the secure job, what I had studied for. I had to go as far as being hired by a big company, to the day when in a suit and tie I set foot in the office, to ask myself if that was really the life I wanted to lead. After only three months I quit my job and accepted a position in an NGO based in Nairobi'.
In 2002, Federico Veronesi's African adventure effectively began.

Those who knew him during those years remember how every weekend he would escape to the savannah to study his beloved animals and immortalise them.
"It was a fantastic time, I would pitch my tent at the gates of the Maasai Mara and spend entire days in contact with its inhabitants, especially elephants and lions, my favourites. Until, after meeting my partner Laura, I got the courage to completely dedicate my professional life to them'.

In 2007, Veronesi decided that the best way to make a living from wildlife photography was to become a professional safari guide, put his best shots online and offer safaris with lessons.
"At the time, no Italians were doing it, and in fact many applications came in,' the photographer recounts, 'but the post-election violence of 2008 stopped everything. I spent months wandering alone in the Mara, in contact with the animals. I think most of the hundreds of thousands of pictures I have are from that period'.

With the upswing in tourism and Laura assisting him in the commercial and marketing side of things, Veronesi began to work intensively and make a name for himself. His international breakthrough came in 2009 with a fantastic report on the caracal. 'the lynx of the savannah, one of the rarest and most difficult felines to immortalise, due to its size and habits'.
His photos landed in the well-known BBC Wildlife magazine and won numerous awards.

Since then it has been a crescendo of fame and above all confirmation that with persistence and faith in one's vocation one can make a living from one's passion.
It is enough to hear his voice quietly inflamed with love for African nature tell the stories behind each shot in the beautiful book entitled "One life", to understand how much Federico Veronesi's life and profession are linked by a single thread, which also unites his partner and son Giulio, now six years old.

Shots that are true works of art, not only for the beauty of the portraits of the specimens themselves, the ability to use backlighting, contrasts and black and white, but also for the ability to humanise his protagonists, recounting their everyday life, affectivity, instincts and entering into a sort of identification of the soul, in which elements emerge that we hardly associate with felines, elephants and giraffes: loneliness, remorse, shame, foresight, altruism. Together with the love of the begotten towards the begotten, returned in such a natural way as to provoke inevitable emotions.
Growth, experiences, formation, adventures, even painful choices, transitions and seasons.
The savannah as a great metaphor for existence.

"One life is not about the animals portrayed or the man who portrays them," explains Veronesi, "the protagonist is life, represented by different actors in as many sets. I have travelled savannahs, crossed forests, spent entire days lurking in front of millenary rocks, in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
I photographed in blazing sun, driving rain, fog and threatening skies, desert wind, dawn and dusk light, because life is made up of contrasting moments and emotions'.
Emotions to which today is also added the concern for the future of the great African natural theatre in which all this life takes place every day, since time immemorial.

"Kenya's natural beauty is not only threatened by poaching, which has always existed, but also by human-animal conflict. It is not at all easy to find a balance between tourism that improves the living conditions of the poor people living in the reserves or near the parks, but at the same time risks causing animal species to disappear,' Veronesi explains.

The thought goes to the spectacle of the great migration, which in the images of the Milanese photographer sublimate into an epic, a phenomenon that in Kenya is slowly disappearing due to the overpopulation of structures and wild tourism close to the Mara river and the invasions of domestic livestock within the reserve. For Veronesi, too, the solution could be to entrust parks and reserves to professionals, organisations and those who, without neglecting business but looking to the future, work to preserve this immense, extraordinary 'one life'.

Federico Veronesi's photographic book, "One life", can be purchased directly from his website and is shipped both to Kenya and Italy. Click here to find out how: https://federicoveronesi.com/book-store