Léo d'Oriano

A 2018 graduate of Gobelins, Léo d’Oriano (born 1997 in France) lives and works in Paris. His work explores intimacy and processes of reconstruction. As part of the MP#01 mentorship program at Agence VU’, he is creating À bas bruit (2020–2021), a story of a polyamorous relationship during the lockdown. As the 2022 winner of the Ministry of Culture’s major photography commission, he devotes himself to Ils en avaient 16 (2022–2023) on the mental health of adolescents in rural areas. Her latest project, which won the Jean-Luc Lagardère Grant in 2024, I feel better (2023-) follows Dean “Taff” Morris, a Welsh bare-knuckle boxer, as he navigates fights, addictions, and a quest for redemption with his son.

Figlio di Roma is a photography project dedicated to Giovanni Carpentieri, a bare-knuckle boxer I met in northern England. His relationship with pain and his Christian faith paint a portrait of a contemporary warrior, for whom fighting becomes a spiritual experience and a way to feel alive. Building on his previous work on violence—its motivations and inner workings—Léo d’Oriano seeks to explore the narrative dimension of this man’s life as he tells his own story. The setting of this story—Rome, which Giovanni claims as his “home”—will be treated as a character in its own right.