JanLeonardo


JanLeonardo is a German photographer, author and speaker of fine-art photography.

Biography

JanLeonardo started off as a self-educated person in photography, preferably working at nighttime. Later on he became assistant of Reinhart-Wolf-Award laureate Stephan Meyer-Bergfeld. As an artist he has worked exclusively with bulb exposures in darkness or nighttime since 2005. His personal challenge is patterned, controlled and choreographed artificial light, staged and organized in a performance. His photographs are easily mixed up with photos altered by image editing or digital images from scratch. He lives in the town of Bremen.
In 2013 JanLeonardo initiated the International Light Painting Award to internationally promote light art performance photography and light painting. The recipients are chosen bi-annually by an international jury consisting of representatives from industry and the arts.
In 2013 the award was endowed with non-cash prizes worth of €9,800.
From 2013 to 2016 JanLeonardo cooperated with the computer giant Lenovo. The world biggest computer company used the light painting photographs for social media advertising, tradeshows and mobil devices.
In 2014 JanLeonardo and Carlotta Bertelli were invited from the town Corigliano Calabro in Italy to photograph the town with lightpainting. The photographs were presented during the festival Corigliano Calabro Fotografia in the ducal Castello di Corigliano Calabro.
In 2016 the artist organized an international light painting exhibition and congress for photokina 2016.
In 2017 JanLeonardo and the gallery owner Curtis Briggs organized a light painting fundraising campaign for the internationally known boarding school Schule Schloss Salem and Kurt Hahn Foundation.

Awards and recognition