Born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1983, Leonardo Carrato now lives in Rio de Janeiro and works as a photographer and filmmaker. In 2024, he became a contributing photographer to The VII Foundation, one of the world’s most prestigious photography organizations.
Since 2018, he has been collaborating with the foundation, where he completed the foundation’s prestigious Mentorship Program. In his role as a contributing photographer, he conceptualizes, hosts, and writes for the foundation’s Online and In-person Events, a project centered around a series of insightful conversations and thought-provoking articles exploring Brazilian photography. The project has featured distinguished guests, including luminaries such as Sebastião Salgado, Claudia Andujar, and Miguel Rio Branco. Additionally, Leonardo acts as an educator, leading seminars on photojournalism and documentary photography tailored for Latin American photographers.
His photography journey began in 2013, when, driven by a desire to go beyond traditional media and democratize information, he co-founded an independent media collective called Coletivo Carranca. Through this group, he was able to give voice to the deep, organic stories from the streets of Rio de Janeiro. While working as an independent photographer within this horizontal media group, Leo developed a project called "The Uprising", providing an insider’s view of the protests that brought millions of people into the streets of Rio de Janeiro.
That same year, he launched a two-year multimedia project called "Article 6", which explores the heart of Rio’s social and housing problems by documenting the lives of hundreds of families living in extreme poverty inside an abandoned public building, just a few meters from the stadium where the World Cup final was to be held. Images from "Article 6" were used as legal documents by the Public Defender’s Office to relocate families into a new social housing project, demonstrating the tangible impact of photography as a tool for social change. Both projects gained significant visibility and were exhibited across the country.
Leo’s desire to connect with the continent’s native cultures and uncover hidden histories led him to the Amazon. Since 2015, he’s been working on a long-term project called "En Bora", about a native Bora shaman in the heart of the rainforest. Additionally, in an effort to reveal Brazil’s search for a common identity, Leo is documenting stories with visual narratives, focusing on the sense of collective memory, its ruins, and its scars, which remain deeply connected to current issues.
His latest artistic-historical project is titled "Krenak Reformatory | fragments of an underground memory", an intense investigation into traces of Brazil’s Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), which are still deeply rooted and visible in society's collective memory today.