Photographer travels the world collecting people's inner thoughts

The black-and-white images are not what you'd call artistic, but they remind photographer Mario Cacciottolo of the people he has met, and the tales they have told him about their lives.

The 41-year-old half-British, half-Maltese journalist is travelling the world documenting people and their words of wisdom for his project, Someone Once Told Me. He was recently in Hong Kong taking portraits of residents around the city. The project was inspired by Cacciottolo's combined love of storytelling, photography and travel. "I loved hearing people tell stories and I loved it when things happened to me. I would immediately think of who I would tell the story to," he explains.

He says the travel bug is the result of his eclectic upbringing: he was born in Southampton in southern England, grew up in Malta, then returned to England to work at the BBC in 2006, when he also took up photography.

"One day, someone paid me a compliment, and I thought to myself that I should remember that. I would remember the compliment whenever I was feeling down, to keep my spirits up," he says. "Then I thought, I'm not the only one who does this. I realised that there are things inside us that are tied to experiences, things that I can represent photographically."

For the project, Cacciottolo asks his subjects to write down something someone has told them on a large piece of paper.