Mariana is a Brazilian photographic artist whose work explores identity, impermanence, and belonging through a distinctive fusion of pictorialism and street photography. Blending documentary observation with dreamlike interpretation, she transforms fleeting moments, urban landscapes, and everyday encounters into evocative visual narratives that exist between reality and imagination.
Having lived in France, Singapore, South Korea, and now Rome, Italy, Mariana’s multicultural experiences deeply inform her way of seeing. Her work reflects an ongoing interest in how people relate to places, memory, change, and the feeling of belonging. Through light, shadow, texture, and movement, she seeks to capture not only what is seen, but also what is felt—and what remains after a moment has passed.
With a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics, Mariana brings an experimental and analytical approach to her photographic practice. Her fascination with light, perception, and time informs her use of long exposure, double exposure, stop motion, and pictorialist techniques, allowing her to explore the space between the tangible and the ephemeral.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, and her projects have received recognition including finalist selections at the Travel Tales Awards 2024 for Caminho dos Gerais: A Travel to the Origins and 2026 for Istanbul Alive.
Through photography, Mariana continues to explore the fragile relationship between people and places, creating images that invite viewers to reflect on who we are, where we belong, and what remains in a world defined by constant change.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Photography, for me, is a bridge between reality and imagination, a space where fleeting moments are transformed into timeless narratives. My work explores memory, identity, and the emotions embedded in places, light, and textures. Through my lens, I seek to reveal the unseen, uncovering intimate stories hidden within the fabric of everyday life.
My artistic practice blends pictorialism with street photography, merging the spontaneity of urban life with the evocative aesthetics of painting. I am particularly drawn to techniques that challenge perception—long exposure, double exposure, and stop motion—allowing me to blur the boundaries between the tangible and the dreamlike. This interplay of techniques invites viewers to engage with my images emotionally, finding their own connections within the visual narratives I create.
BIOGRAPHY
Brazilian photographic artist Mariana explores identity, impermanence, and belonging through a distinctive fusion of pictorialism and street photography. Her work is shaped by a life lived across cultures (Brazil, France, Singapore, South Korea, and now Rome, Italy) where movement, displacement, and encounters with unfamiliar places have become central to the way she sees and photographs the world.
Immersed in Rome’s layered history and vibrant street life, Mariana creates visual narratives that move between documentary authenticity and painterly abstraction. Her photographs often begin with everyday encounters, but transform them through light, shadow, texture, and atmosphere, creating images that exist somewhere between memory and reality.
Her practice is grounded in three interconnected themes: identity, impermanence, and belonging. These themes emerge from both personal experience and a broader fascination with the ways people relate to places, cultures, memories, and one another. Projects such as 'Caminho dos Gerais', 'Once Called Home', 'Ethereal Echoes of Happy Times', and 'Shadows of Solitude: A Silent Dialogue' explore different facets of memory, displacement, emotional attachment, and the passage of time. More recent projects, including 'Istanbul Alive', continue this exploration through the energy, contradictions, and fleeting moments of contemporary urban life.
Although street photography remains one of her strongest passions, Mariana has increasingly incorporated pictorialist approaches into her practice, using softness, abstraction, and intentional ambiguity to transform observed reality into something more dreamlike. Long exposure, double exposure, and stop-motion techniques further allow her to explore the boundaries between the tangible and the ephemeral. In series such as 'Castle of Dreams' and 'Liquid Impressions', photography becomes a space where observation and imagination coexist.
Her background in quantum physics brings another dimension to this process. Holding a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics, Mariana approaches photography with a meticulous and experimental mindset, informed by a longstanding fascination with light, perception, and the relationship between observation and reality. Rather than separating her scientific and artistic practices, she sees them as complementary ways of investigating the world: one through measurement and experimentation, the other through intuition, emotion, and visual language.
Her multicultural experiences have shaped a photographic perspective attentive to both difference and the universal experiences that connect people across places. Works such as 'A Timeless Land in Motion' and 'Many Chinas' engage with cultural identity and metropolitan life, while 'Once Called Home' reflects on the emotional relationship between people and the places they leave behind. Across these bodies of work, Mariana seeks moments in which the personal becomes universal: a gesture, a landscape, a fragment of architecture, or a fleeting encounter that speaks to something larger about being human.
Mariana’s work has been exhibited internationally, including:
Connessioni 2026, Rome, Italy
Jazz Frames 2026, Rome, Italy
Collettiva Fotografica Pigneto 2025, Rome, Italy
Liquid Impressions 2025, solo exhibition in the metaverse
Interstícios 2025, Studio Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
Open Art Rome 2024, Art Number 23, Gallery Medina, Rome, Italy
Una Mostra da Paura 2024, Ariccia, Italy
Rome Art Expo 2024, MUSA, Italy
Collettiva Fotografica Pigneto 2024, Rome, Italy
Urban Exhibits: Photo Days Tour 2024, Trieste, Italy
Her project 'Caminho dos Gerais: A Travel to the Origins' was a finalist at the Travel Tales Awards 2024, while 'Istanbul Alive' was selected as a finalist at the Travel Tales Awards 2026. Both projects reflect her ongoing interest in the relationship between place, memory, identity, and the experience of belonging.
Mariana holds a degree in Physics, a Master’s in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics. She has further developed her photographic practice through specialized studies including Seeing Through Photographs at MoMA and Michigan State University’s Photography Basics and Beyond Specialization.
Her photographic journey continues to move between the spontaneous and the constructed, the documentary and the dreamlike. At the heart of her practice is an enduring interest in what remains and what disappears: how places shape us, how identities evolve, and how the fleeting traces of experience can become images that hold a sense of belonging long after the moment has passed.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Photography, for me, is a bridge between reality and imagination, a space where fleeting moments are transformed into timeless narratives. My work explores memory, identity, and the emotions embedded in places, light, and textures. Through my lens, I seek to reveal the unseen, uncovering intimate stories hidden within the fabric of everyday life.
My artistic practice blends pictorialism with street photography, merging the spontaneity of urban life with the evocative aesthetics of painting. I am particularly drawn to techniques that challenge perception—long exposure, double exposure, and stop motion—allowing me to blur the boundaries between the tangible and the dreamlike. This interplay of techniques invites viewers to engage with my images emotionally, finding their own connections within the visual narratives I create.
I also shoot with film, embracing its tactile nature and the unique characteristics it brings to the creative process. The grain, texture, and depth of analog photography add another layer of meaning to my work, reinforcing the themes of memory and transience that I continuously explore. Film allows me to slow down, be intentional with every frame, and cultivate a deeper connection with my subjects and surroundings.
My background in quantum physics deeply informs my creative approach. Concepts such as the behavior of light, the fluidity of time, and the balance between order and chaos influence my photographic process. Each image becomes an experiment—a carefully crafted interplay of science and emotion, structure and serendipity. I am drawn to themes of transience: how memories fade, how identities shift, and how places hold echoes of those who have passed through them.
Having lived in different cultures—Brazil, Singapore, France, South Korea, and now Italy—my perspective is shaped by diverse influences. I am fascinated by the way people interact with their environments, how urban landscapes carry traces of history and personal stories. Projects like Once Called Home, A Timeless Land in Motion, and Many Chinas explore the intersections between culture and individual experience, capturing the nuances of belonging and displacement.
Ultimately, my photography is an invitation—to pause, to reflect, and to see the extraordinary within the ordinary. It is a visual dialogue between past and present, presence and absence, reality and imagination. Each image I create is a whisper of a story waiting to be heard, a fragment of time suspended in light and shadow.