Photojournalist Massimo Sestini comes out of a coma: extubated, he can also breathe on his own and among his first thoughts he asked, even though he can't speak very well yet, to be able to contact his rescuers to thank them. This was reported by his colleagues at his agency.
The internationally renowned photographer remains hospitalized in Trento.
On Saturday morning he felt ill while diving in Lavarone : after entering the lake waters, frozen by the cold temperatures of these days , he felt ill, lost consciousness and never returned to the surface . The alarm was raised immediately. The Lavarone firefighters and the Red Cross of the Altipiani Cimbri intervened on site to help him. Pulled out of the lake in cardiac arrest, Sestini was resuscitated on site by rescuers and then transported by helicopter to the hospital in Trento.
Born in Prato in 1963, Massimo Sestini is one of the most prominent photographers on the Italian scene. The shot that made him famous in the world dates back to 1991, he photographed Diana in a bathing suit in Sardinia. His first scoops date back to 1984: he managed to photograph Licio Gelli in Geneva while he was being escorted to prison and on December 23, 1984 he was the only photographer to enter the carriage of the Rapido 904 destroyed by a bomb in the San Benedetto Val di Sambro Gallery.
Sestini has photographed, among others, Charles of England in Recanati while he was painting a watercolor, the tragedy of the Moby Prince and even what remained after the attacks on Falcone and Borsellino. One of his most famous shots was that of the Costa Concordia: in 2012 he dived with the Navy divers inside the ship that had just sunk. Sestini was also awarded the World Press Photo Award for the photo, taken from above, of a dinghy loaded with 227 migrants off the coast of Libya.
(Online Union)
