How old are you? Where do you currently live and work?
I am 55 years old, I live in São Paulo, and I am a documentary photographer, developing work for two projects: The Great Guardians and When the Earth Whispers, which will soon become books.
Tell us about your journey in photography. When did you start photographing and why? What role does photography play in your life?
I started photography 5 years ago, driven by the beauty I found in the people of traditional communities and villages I visited in Brazil and around the world. Many of these communities, despite being extremely isolated with few resources, had people who held in their gaze and smile a beauty that always enchanted me. I began to observe up close the connection these people have with their origins—knowledge, stories, and practices transmitted from generation to generation.
That’s how the desire to document these faces, gazes, and places was born, documenting ancestral cultures that maintain their vitality, despite the pressure of globalization which, little by little, has been promoting the erasure of practices, ways of life, and rituals linked to the ancestry of these peoples.
Today, through the images I produce, I seek not only to share this beauty and potential with the world but also to return these records to the communities themselves. Photography, for me, is a tool for preserving memory and valuing cultural diversity—original stories that span generations.
Photography has allowed me a deeper connection with people and places. I learned to look more carefully at the light, the details, and the habits of each people. I began to perceive what might have previously gone unnoticed: human complexity expressed in such distinct, and yet so similar, ways.
The more I photograph, the more I fall in love with what I do and the more I learn. My goal is to preserve and value cultures linked to ancestry, which are disappearing before our eyes—but still have so much to teach us.
