I met Daniel years ago. He is one of the most talented artists involved in our PhotoVogue community, and we exhibited his work at our festival back in 2017.
It has been a pleasure to see him grow as an artist. His work moves me deeply—it’s authentic,
delicate, poetic, never voyeuristic, and it comes from a place deep inside him. His debut monograph, Like a River, published by Loose Joints, is the result of one of the most beautiful projects that I have seen in years.
Daniel is part of a new generation of artists who are socially conscious, aware of the inherently
political nature of images, who use their lenses as a tool for change. Their work, whether it revolves around fashion, portraiture, or the arts, is imbued with issues of gender, representation, identity, race, breaking stereotypes, clichés, and conforming representations.
With Like a River, Daniel continues his long-term commitment to visualising the social and political
rights of underrepresented communities. In this case he explores notions of identity, transformation, and coming-of-age narratives within marginalized communities at the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
I was honored when Daniel approached me to help him with editing the project, and I couldn’t be
more proud to see the book come to life.
Like a River is like a poem, a love letter to the subjects and the nature that are in it. Page by page, he is able to render not only the physicality of the places portrayed, but the emotions, the sounds, the smells, or the absence thereof.
I asked him a few questions:
Can you tell us about the project? What is it about? How did you start? What inspired you about it?
How long did you stay there?
My first trip to the Amazon was in 2019, but the project actually began a year before that in
Mozambique, where I have lived on and of for over 10 years, which is also the reason I speak
Portuguese. I was working in Mozambique on another project when I met a Brazilian woman who put me in contact with a friend of hers that lives on a small river in the Brazilian Amazon. His Name is Thiago Cavalli, and we began speaking, first through WhatsApp and then a series of phone calls. He founded an organization called Casa Do Rio that focuses on Indigenous youth leadership, however he always wanted it to also function as an artist residency, so he of ered to host me as an artist in residence for 6 weeks in the summer of 2019. Between then and 2021, I made 2 more long trips, working mostly in a town called Careiro which sits at the base of the Tupana river. At the core, this project is about challenging expectations and general assumptions about Indigenous life in the Brazilian Amazon. In particular, it explores how deep indigenous traditions and modern identity politics meet in a celebratory, safe space, against the contrasting backdrop of environmental degradation, violence, and discrimination.
For all the latest fasion News Click Here
