The trajectory of Rio-based photographer Juliana Bizzo is a testament to transformation and encounter. After a cancer diagnosis interrupted her 13-year career as a pediatric dentist, she found in the camera a tool for reconnecting with her body and identity. Today, her lens is dedicated to documenting drag culture, the ballroom scene, and street movements with affection and power, transforming photography into her political and creative territory.
The image “Unerased Reflection“, a finalist in the Single Image category of the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025, is an icon of this mission. Part of a documentary series on the backstages of Rio’s drag scene, the photograph captures an intimate moment of transformation, shifting the gaze from the spectacle to the vulnerable and powerful gesture that precedes applause. More than makeup, every stroke is a manifesto of existence, a reflection of resistance against erasure. The image perfectly synthesizes Juliana’s focus: celebrating presence, identity, and self-construction as fundamental political acts.
Dive into the following interview to learn more about the photographer and the projects she is developing to create a living archive of contemporary resistance in Brazil.
How old are you? Where do you currently live and work?
I am 46 years old, I live and work in Rio de Janeiro. My base is here, but my photography travels wherever stories ask to be told.
Tell us about your journey in photography. When did you start photographing and why? What role does photography play in your life?
Photography entered my life first as a breath, and then as an urgency. I am a Dentistry graduate and worked for 13 years as a pediatric dentist, until a cancer diagnosis turned everything upside down. During this period, I found in photography a way to reconnect with my body and my identity, and it was drag culture that gave me back my spark. Photographing drag, ballroom, street movements, and dissident bodies was not a niche choice, but a true choice. Today, photography is my political, affective, and creative territory. It is the space where I transform what I live into images, and where I create bridges between the personal and the collective.
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?
The image is part of a documentary series on the backstages of the drag scene in Rio de Janeiro, produced since the beginning of 2023, always in the heat of preparation, capturing emotions and bringing my audience into a more intimate moment that they would not have the opportunity to see if it weren’t for my photos.\
This particular photo captures a moment of transformation. The proposal is to shift the gaze from the spectacle to what precedes the applause, to the intimate gesture that sustains the performance.
In drag art, every stroke is more than makeup; it is a manifesto. And the photo is called “Unerased Reflection” because it lives in memory, in the body, and in the politics of existing as one desires, despite censorship, moralism, and every attempt at erasure.
This work fits organically into my production: it is about presence, identity, and resistance. Just as in a ball or a street movement, here too there is a body that constructs itself before me, carrying history, vulnerability, and power.
What projects are you currently working on? What are your near-future plans for photographic production?
Currently, I work on three main fronts:
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Drag Scene Backstages – A long-term series that follows drag artists in the moments before and after performance, when glitter meets sweat and the character coexists with the person off-stage. My goal is to shift the gaze from the spectacle to intimacy and vulnerability, showing that drag art is also a political act of self-construction and reconstruction.
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Ballroom Culture in Brazil – I document the Balls and their backstages, investigating how the houses function as chosen family, networks of affection, and spaces of affirmation for LGBTQIAPN+ bodies. My work helps eternalize moments that often only live in the memory of those who participate. I do this by placing my perspective as a white lesbian woman at the service of this community, aware of my positions and limits, to deliver professional work worthy of the scene’s power.
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Street Movements – I also photograph political and cultural manifestations such as the Marcha das Mulheres Negras, the Marcha da Maconha, protests against rights setbacks, LGBTQIAPN+ Parades, and religious celebrations like Dia de Iemanjá. In these coverages, I seek the intersection between faith, body, and struggle, understanding the street as an altar, stage, and trench at the same time.
For the future, I intend to deepen these three fronts, expanding the dialogue between them in an exhibition and editorial project that combines image and text. My goal is to create a body of work that functions as a living archive of contemporary resistance in Brazil, preserving narratives that have historically been invisibilized.
