
THE BEAR
Francesco Sonetti is a freelance photographer born in Tuscany and based in Florence.
With over ten years of experience as an international corporate photographer and a specialist in wedding photography, he has worked across Europe, Asia, and the United States, collaborating with companies, institutions, and private clients.
In 2020, he was awarded the WPPI grant for his project on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, which he presented at the annual WPPI meeting in Las Vegas. He collaborated with A.I.P.I. on a project on second-generation immigration in Bologna and later worked with RENA to promote photography courses in high school.
Today, he is dedicated to documentary photography. His work focuses on environmental diseases and society's impact on the land, analyzing how human intervention transforms landscapes and the consequences that follow.
What fascinates him most about photography is its direct relationship with reality—it cannot be separated from its subject. Adopting a documentary style, he explores themes closely linked to the impact of society on the environment, which allows him to take a political stance in the world. He perceives the contemporary landscape and its contradictions as a symbol of the evolution of a consumer society in crisis. In his current projects, he explores ways to represent landscapes shaped by the political, economic, and ecological crises we are experiencing today.
He lived for several years in Berlin, where he encountered a profoundly different visual culture—an experience that broadened his perspective and refined his photographic language. Immersing himself in such a dynamic artistic and social reality influenced his research, leading him to develop an increasingly critical and layered approach to imagery and its narrative power.
After attending a technical institute, he left university to travel the world. Upon returning, he worked as a farmer in Tuscany, eventually becoming a winery supervisor.
Something happened—though he still cannot quite recall what—that led him to study photography. He left his career in the wine industry and moved to Milan, where he worked as a photography assistant in a fashion studio. Eventually, he returned to Tuscany, the starting point of everything, where he launched his career as a freelance photographer, using it as a base to continue traveling and working worldwide.