LUCAS NINNO
Lucas Ninno was born in Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso, where the Cerrado meets the Pantanal. His childhood, shaped by rivers, waterfalls, and life outdoors, nurtured a deep bond with the natural world — a connection that still guides him today.
Coming from a low-income family, his path into photography was built through persistence. In 2011, driven by both passion and necessity, he began photographing for local newspapers. It was there he learned to tell stories — a skill that would become central to his environmental work.
Over the following decade, Ninno contributed to national and international outlets such as Reuters, Getty Images, and United Press International. In 2019, his first photoseries for National Geographic Brazil was published: the coverage of the Brumadinho Dam disaster. Since then, he has reported on the Pantanal fires (2020), Brazil’s historic drought (2021), and the devastating floods in Petrópolis (2022), steadily shaping an environmental gaze rooted in memory and personal experience.
In 2022, he received a grant from the National Geographic Society to pursue his most ambitious project: an in-depth visual journey through the Cerrado, the vast and threatened Brazilian savanna. Despite being one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, the Cerrado remains absent from the global imagination and neglected by conservation policy.
Now, as an explorer retracing the landscapes of his childhood, Lucas uses photography to reconnect people with this forgotten biome — and to spark the urgency needed to protect the Cerrado's vast and irreplaceable stronghold of life.
AWARDS
POYi Latam – Pictures of the Year International Latin America (2011)
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Lente Latino – Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Chile (2011)
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Pérsio Galembeck National Photography Salon, Brazil (2011)
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Imagen Virtual – Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2012)
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POYi Latam – Pictures of the Year International Latin America (2013)
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China 16th International Photographic Art Exhibition (2016)
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SESC DF Arts Biennial – Honorable Mention and inclusion in the permanent collection (2018)
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IEJN National Journalism Award – Report "Why Brazil Dried Up", published by National Geographic Brazil
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National Geographic Explorer Grantee (2022)
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Lente Latino – Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Chile (2011)
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Pérsio Galembeck National Photography Salon, Brazil (2011)
—
Imagen Virtual – Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2012)
—
POYi Latam – Pictures of the Year International Latin America (2013)
—
China 16th International Photographic Art Exhibition (2016)
—
SESC DF Arts Biennial – Honorable Mention and inclusion in the permanent collection (2018)
—
IEJN National Journalism Award – Report "Why Brazil Dried Up", published by National Geographic Brazil
—
National Geographic Explorer Grantee (2022)