With the book Orphans, Roman photographer Valerio Bispuri – after documenting South American prisons with Encerrados and the devastation of drugs with Paco – continues his long-standing work on denied freedom. A project published by Dario Cimorelli Editore that gives a face and a voice to those who have never truly had one: children left without families.

Orphans is a painful and necessary journey through orphanages around the world, from Lusaka to Buenos Aires, from Beboml to Karachi. A journey where Valerio Bispuri doesn’t just document, but shows something even more impactful than mere suffering. In Zambia, the photographer enters the House of Happiness, an orphanage for children with disabilities where no journalist had ever been before.

Again, in Argentina, he tells the story of the silent abandonment of dozens of minors locked away in near-unlivable sanitary conditions. Moving on to Belarus, war has frozen all adoptions, leaving children in a limbo of trauma and violence. Finally, in Pakistan, the reality is even harsher: chains, sedatives, and paralyzed bodies become routine in institutions like Dar ul Sukoon, while hundreds of children beg on the streets.

The images in Orphans are sharp, raw, but never gratuitous. There is empathy, respect, and above all, responsibility. Bispuri isn’t chasing scandal, but a gaze: the gaze of children who often can’t even meet the lens, locked in a silence that screams.

This project is the fifth chapter in a decade-long exploration of the deepest sense of deprivation. With contributions from writers Andrea Caschetto and Roberto Saviano, Orphans is not just a photo book but a true political and emotional document. A condemnation of a global system that prefers not to see. But also an urgent and powerful invitation to stop and look.

Valerio Bispuri’s orphans are not just abandoned children. They are faces and stories, but also a mirror of a humanity that has stopped caring for those left behind.

You can pre-order the book here.