Fernanda Eisfeld: Where Sacred Water Meets the Sands of Time

Born 34 years ago in Curitiba and now based in São Paulo, Fernanda Eisfeld builds a nomadic trajectory that unites photography, architecture, and ancestry. With work that spreads across territories and continents, she transforms the camera into an instrument for listening to spaces, developing the concept of “affective documentation of habitats.” Her relationship with imagery comes from childhood, among albums and glass negatives from her photographer grandfather – who raffled off his camera to pay for his wedding to her grandmother, a gesture without which Fernanda herself might not exist. This family heritage made her understand that images carry much more than records: they contain gestures, smells, silences, and memories that insist on persisting.

Her image “Oxum in Lençóis Maranhenses” a finalist in the Single Image category of the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025, is a cinematic still that transcends its origin to become a powerful symbol of resistance. Captured during the filming of the movie Mocambo by Gustavo Havelange, the photograph documents the encounter between body and territory where the presence of Oxum – orisha of fresh waters – reverberates in the vast white and liquid expanse of the Lençóis Maranhenses, evoking healing, fertility, and protection. Behind the dreamlike beauty, however, echoes the silent tension of an Amazonian Maranhão where traditional communities and territories face threats from land grabbing, deforestation, and monoculture. The work perfectly synthesizes Eisfeld’s practice: a gesture simultaneously poetic and political to preserve, in light and color, that which insists on surviving in the face of destruction.

Learn more about this journey between architecture, cinema, and ancestral memory in the following interview.

Imagem do Ensaio Mulheres de Mocambo, de Fernanda Eisfeld, selecionado no Prêmio Portfólio FotoDoc 2025

How old are you? Where do you currently live and work?

I was born 34 years ago in Curitiba and, today, I live in São Paulo. My work spreads across different territories and continents, between displacements, fields, and cities. My dwelling is where I find stories and landscapes to document.

Tell us about your journey in photography. When did you start photographing and why? What role does photography play in your life?

During childhood, among boxes and albums from my grandfather’s archive, with glass and film negatives from the 1940s and 1950s, which held entire worlds in small rectangles of light and shadow, I immersed myself in photography. My grandfather worked as a photographer before anything else, but he raffled off his camera to pay for his wedding to my grandmother. Perhaps I wouldn’t exist without such detachment. But ancestry is strong, and I understood that images are more than mere records: they contain gestures, smells, the silence of a place. As an architect and urban planner, I learned to read spaces; with the camera, I learned to listen to them to create an affective documentation of habitats, preserving what time tries to erase, but memory insists on keeping.

Dona Mudesta – Imagem do Ensaio Mulheres de Mocambo, de Fernanda Eisfeld, selecionado no Prêmio Portfólio FotoDoc 2025

Tell us about your finalist work for the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025. When and where was it created? What is its concept? How does it fit into your photographic practice?

Oxum in Lençóis Maranhenses was documented during the filming of the movie Mocambo by Gustavo Havelange. It is a still, but it carries the intensity of a living portrait, the encounter between body and territory. The presence of Oxum, the orisha of fresh waters, reverberates in the vast white and liquid expanse of the Lençóis, evoking healing, fertility, and protection. Behind the beauty, there is the silent tension of a Maranhão that, in its Amazonian portion, sees traditional communities and territories threatened by the advance of land grabbing, deforestation, and monoculture. The photograph is, thus, both memory and resistance: a gesture to preserve, in light and color, that which insists on surviving.

What projects are you currently working on? What are your near-future plans for photographic production?

At the moment, I am working on two projects: a photobook with images and accounts from the hitchhiking expedition from Berlin to Beijing – Buscando a bondade pelo mundo (Seeking Kindness Around the World), carried out with my brother in 2018; and I am also conducting documentary research on the transformation of Curitiba’s urban landscape over time, re-taking my grandfather’s photographs in the same locations and analyzing what still remains.

I remain close to traditional and local communities, researching habitat as hybrid forms of narration: between photography, drawings, and the word. I will continue to document these territories, building a living archive of affections, memories, and resistances. A breath for new possible worlds.