Photography and architecture define the professional life of André Nazareth, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he maintains a studio serving as a creative space, gallery, and hub for artistic and architectural photography projects. His personal work explores themes of time and landscape.
His series Postcard, a finalist in the Photo Essay category of the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025, reflects on the fractured reality of Brazil’s major metropolises, offering a unique perspective on Rio’s landscape—marked by the contrast between hills and asphalt. The frames juxtapose Rio’s icons—Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf Mountain, and Pedra da Gávea—with formal neighborhoods and the favelas clinging to the surrounding hills, creating visual tensions that provoke deeper reflection.
André Nazareth is currently developing Ephemeral Passage, a project contrasting human presence against landscapes using long-exposure techniques. Learn more about the photographer and his work in the interview below.
How old are you? Where do you currently live and work?
I’m 54 years old and live in Rio de Janeiro, where I run my studio—a creative space, gallery, and meeting point for artistic projects and architectural photography.
Tell us about your journey in photography. When did you start, and why? What role does photography play in your life?
Photography has been part of my life since my Architecture studies, where documentary language first connected me to the practice. Over time, architecture became a field for dialogue, representation, and reflection, exploring cities, their transitions and permanence, collectivity, and spatial transformations. My work balances artistic investigations of time and landscape with architectural photography, which deepens this visual research. For me, photography is essential—a means to observe and interpret the world, blending work and thought.
Tell us about your work selected as a finalist for the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025. When and where was it created? What was your vision? How does it fit into your broader body of work?
Postcard began during the pandemic, when street access was restricted, and I could only shoot from my rooftop in Rio’s South Zone. Those initial images sparked a meditation on a city divided geographically and socially, yet still an interconnected whole. By placing Rio’s landmarks alongside formal neighborhoods and nearby favelas, the series creates visual tensions that urge viewers to confront coexistence, inequality, and the city as a single organism.
This work aligns with my broader focus on the relationship between landscape, architecture, and human presence, expressed through a deliberate aesthetic lens.
What projects are you currently working on? What are your near-future plans for your photographic practice?
Ephemeral Passage examines our fleeting presence against the enduring architecture we build and nature’s millennia-long cycles. This temporal disparity invites reflection on ecological responsibility—why we plan futures with lasting materials but often neglect the essential.
Currently, I’m immersed in documenting São Paulo’s Paulista Avenue and Rio’s Rio Branco Avenue, where daily life intertwines with classical and contemporary architecture in these iconic urban arteries. Similar approaches guide series like Vai Passar, Travessia, and Barracão, merging documentary and poetic layers to explore cities, landscapes, and human presence.
Translated by Deepseek AI
