Alberto Tessore, born in Torino in 1937, broke up
soon with his family’s traditional catholic lower middle-class life and at the
age of 16 embarked on adventurous travels that brought him, since 1958, to
India – for more than one year -, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and later,
as a journalist and photo-reporter, to Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
From 1980 to 1985 he was attaché at the Italian Cultural Institute in Ethiopia.
There, differently from most foreigners, he learnt the local language (Amharic)
in order to easily associate with the social and religious world both of the
Copt Christians and of the Muslims (who represent half of the population of
that country). He was able to examine from close up phenomena that foreigners
could hardly approach in those times, like the Islamic religious feasts in
Sheykh Hussein, a secluded sanctuary at the border with Somalia, where pilgrims
from all over Ethiopia – as in the times of Bible – were walking even two or
three months, with donkeys, wives and sons, to reach that holy place of
Ethiopian Islam. As a result of those long years of travel he published the
photographic book "Ethiopia, spoor of time", printed in three different
editions (Italian, English and French).
These experiences – as well as many
other – along with an untiring study of extra-European cultures, of Islam and
other religions, led him to become an anthropologist, though not by profession,
and to develop a relativistic and agnostic view of life, near to Enlightenment
and opposed to any dogmatic religious position.
Together with his son Dag Tessore,
he is author of the book “A Dialogue on Islam between a Father and a Son”
(Fazi, 2014).
Being expert of contemporary art too
– and he himself artist -, he published the book "Work of art, yes or not?Art as a way of life" (Guida, 2006).
