Luigi Toscano

Luigi Toscano, the son of Sicilian immigrants who grew up being called a "Kanakenkind" (immigrant kid), found his way out through photography - away from the violence and neglect of his childhood, away from drugs and the streets. As a photographer, he fights against forgetting, hatred, and the creeping indifference of our times. His oversized portraits of more than 600 victims of war and atrocity are on public display around the world: at German railway stations, at Babyn Yar, in Paris and New York.

His own biography intertwines with the life of Anna Strishkova from Kyiv, the centrepiece of his exhibitions - she was deported as a child by the Germans to Auschwitz in 1943 and spent her entire life searching for her family.

Toscano is a photographer and filmmaker. For over ten years he has been travelling with his multimedia memory project Gegen das Vergessen; UNESCO named him an Artist for Peace.

This event is a collaboration between Literaturherbst Heidelberg, DAI, and the Dokumentations- und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma, as part of Literaturherbst Heidelberg 2026.