Leonardo Finotti was born in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1977. In 2001, he had a degree in architecture from UFU in his hometown. While studying architecture, he began to explore photography under the tutelage of Thomaz Harrell in 1997, and as a visiting fine arts student in 2000, he presented a final thesis titled Cromofotografopolis. Impercepções was his first significant solo work and led to several exhibitions in Brazil between 2001 and 2002.
In 2002, he was selected for the 19th April Apprenticeship Program in journalism in São Paulo and later for an internship at Fabrica in Treviso, Italy. After the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale, where the landscape studio Proap (João Nunes and Carlos Ribas) was selected to represent Portugal in the exhibition, Leonardo had the opportunity to begin photographing their work. This led him to focus on architectural photography, and he subsequently moved to Portugal.
In 2003–2004, he had another significant opportunity: the Joy the Kolleg Transitspaces project between Berlin and Moscow at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany. At the end of 2004, he photographed Paulo David's Casa das Mudas Arts Centre in Madeira, which was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. By then, he was already filming important projects by selected Portuguese architects, such as João Gomes da Silva, Inês Lobo, Ricardo Bak Gordon, João Favila, Carrilho da Graça, Souto de Moura, and Aires Mateus, among others.
In late 2005, he filmed the construction site of the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, designed by Álvaro Siza. Commissioned by the architect, the film was published worldwide in leading architecture publications and was his first commissioned work in his homeland. Following this, he began close collaborations with prominent Brazilian architects, Mendes da Rocha, Marcos Acayaba, Isay Weinfeld, Thiago Bernardes/Paulo Jacobsen, and Gustavo Penna, among others.
In 2007, during the centenary of Oscar Niemeyer, Leonardo challenged himself with an ambitious project: 100 Years, 100 Photos, 100 Works. It began with the obvious idea of photographing the 100 most representative works of the Brazilian master and ended with the most significant contemporary photographic archive on Niemeyer, featuring around 200 buildings worldwide. By then, the solitary photography work had evolved into a team effort when Guilherme Francisco Lopes coordinated a small team to retouch the photos, while Alex Souza became our official editor.
At the beginning of 2008, while inaugurating an amazing photography exhibition at Electricity Museum on Niemeyer's work in Lisbon, curated by Michelle Jean de Castro and designed by Ruben Dias, Leonardo set his base in São Paulo. At the end of the year, Gustavo Hiriart, architect and professor at the University of Uruguay, joined our team. Given our need to have some of our work online, plus a previous experience on a blog, Gustavo proposed Leonardofinotti.blogspot.com. What started as an online portfolio and a method for compiling and organising their work, the blog rapidly became an editorial platform with one post per day over three years, where projects were organised every week by a different theme.
In 2009, the blog took its own identity, adding and producing content constantly in two directions: his commissioned work and authorial projects where modern and contemporary architecture is the baseline. They created a work system called triangle where architects, publishers and our studio have their own edge. Very transparent, efficient and independent, this network potentializes this cooperative chain, where architects concentrate on providing their best graphics and concepts, their studio takes accurate photographs, and the editor has better conditions for making good content.
In 2010, they decided to create this website, developed by Nu Design, and we are very happy to share all our work. In 2011, Nelson Ferreira joined our team in the financial matters in order to help our collaborative dreams come through! 11.11.11, official inauguration of www.leonardofinotti.com with 1111 projects and 1111 publications.
