ABOUT

I'm Luiza Saad, a 30-year-old from Rio de Janeiro who, 3 years ago, made the decision to leave her hometown to live in Paraty. This decision came together with another equally daring one: to live entirely from photography.

Since I was a child, my interest in living beings and nature was accompanied by a careful look at their details. These were moments of reverence for the beauty of life. Photography soon became an important activity for me to record these little charms in images.

Later, during my graduation in Biology – yes, I am a Science and Biology professor by training, with a Masters in Education from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – I became interested in learning the optical processes involved in image formation and recording within the camera, as well as all the necessary choices to manually take a good photo. So I invested in a good camera and took my first basic photography course at an old and traditional photography school in Rio de Janeiro: Ateliê da Imagem. It was the first step towards my professionalization.

From then on, I never stopped. I took more courses. I photographed more, read more, entered this universe head on. Also during my graduation, I took several courses in the Degree that fit into the Human Sciences grid. As a result of these studies, my view of people, society and the world has changed, and with photography, it was no different. I understood that it wasn't just about recording the “real” and its “beauty”: it was also an instrument of creation of this very world we live in and an incredible means of expression, capable of giving voice to me and the other. An act of transformation. So, all my interests and life purposes converged on photography. I wanted to photograph and, through this language, get to know, help and transform people's lives.

I wanted to live off photography. Coincidentally (or not), at that same moment in my life, I met and fell in love with my current partner, a São Paulo native who, in addition to wanting to leave the big city and move to Paraty, also wanted to make photography his profession. There was no other: together, we were the support we needed to finally make this decision. So, we moved to Paraty and started working entirely with photography. Currently, I'm happy, I love the place and the life I've chosen to live, and I'm grateful for having made photography a path that leads me to meet amazing people, their productions and their stories and, above all, to be able to contribute with their trajectories and your life dreams.