Leleo Lopes
Brazilian, born in Rio de Janeiro and living in Minas Gerais since I was 11 years old. In
2007, on a walk through the city with a friend he pointed to a scene and said "look what
a beautiful picture", since then I started to create photographs with scenes I saw on the
way. I say that I started photographing without even having any equipment, wherever I
went I couldn't stop, since that walk, to see it in pictures. In 2008 I bought my first
camera and started experimenting with recording in the region of Ouro Preto and
Mariana.
In the following years I dedicated all the time I could to photograph places where I
passed, Ouro Preto, Recife, Salvador, Fortaleza, Amazonia, Belo Horizonte, India, Italy,
France, Germany, Czech Republic, Cuba, Argentina and Uruguay. In this constant act of
observing and recording I became less distracted by the paths around me and began to
understand myself and make more comprehensible the senses and sensations that
involve everything I do.
Also in the city of Ouro Preto I was director of photography for 7 years at a local TV,
this allowed me to keep a close eye even when it was not possible to be on the street
photographing. I learned in all this time producing images that the composition is a cut
of a movement that continues, like a fragmented film that never ends, and it is this film
that is always open that allows me the creative daydream. Today my creative gesture
goes wherever I am, and for me photography has no name or limits in the face of the
incredible possibilities that life offers
Artist statement
Recording the beauty of the ordinary is what I seek to do with my work. The banal,
which often goes unnoticed, is what captures my body when I am about to photograph.
Photography for me is not limited to the act of pushing a button on an equipment, it is
also walking through the city letting my senses guide me, it is observing scenes that
reveal the intimacy of relationships, it is waiting for the moment and conditions in
which everything I am seeing and feeling can materialize in a way that tells those who
will look at that picture and will be able, in some way, to feel what I felt when I took it.
Photography as an artistic object is political, and that is why when I photograph I bring
into focus everyday scenes that reveal the most unique things that people can have. I
tell stories of people I don't even know, but at the moment of the photo they touched
me in a very sensitive way. I think my work is an aesthetic way to demonstrate how
important these stories of strangers are to me.
When I photograph I look for scenes that can survive time, I tell my own and other
people's stories with the intention of saying that these lives are important. With my
work I claim an aesthetic that is not that of perfection, but of sensations. I claim a time
in which we can contemplate life and perceive its multiple movements.