Photographing Sri Lanka’s human-elephant conflict — Interview with Federico Borella

Italian photographer Federico Borella discusses four years spent documenting the human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka, work that won him the 2024 Picture of the Year International award in the environmental category. He focused on districts like Anuradhapura and Galgamuwa, chosen through local reporting rather than tourist-trail wildlife spots.

Borella describes finding reverence for elephants even among families who lost relatives to attacks, a contradiction he says complicates any simple story of humans versus animals. He frames his approach as documenting complexity rather than prescribing conclusions, drawing on a career that has also covered farmer suicides in India and the exotic animal trade in Italy.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.