Maria Abranches
Independent Photojournalist and Documentary Photographer @ Reuters / Based in Lisbon, Portugal
Maria Abranches works as an independent documentary photographer with a focus on human rights issues. She grew up in close contact with visual and performing arts - with a father who was a painter and a mother involved in classical...
read on
Focus:
Photojournalist, Journalist, Travel, Fine Art, News, Art, Culture, Arts & Culture, Journalist Investigative, Civil Rights and Social Inequality, Assignments, Cinematography, International, Newspapers, Storyteller, Climate, News Reporter, Political Journalism, Arts Journalism, Print Journalism, Environmental Stories, Sustainable Travel, Social Justice, Visual Storyteller, Visual Storytelling
About
Available in: Lisbon, Portugal
Focused on:
Photojournalist, Journalist, Travel, Fine Art, News, Art, Culture, Arts & Culture, Journalist Investigative, Civil Rights and Social Inequality, Assignments, Cinematography, International, Newspapers, Storyteller, Climate, News Reporter, Political Journalism, Arts Journalism, Print Journalism, Environmental Stories, Sustainable Travel, Social Justice, Visual Storyteller, Visual Storytelling
Coverage Regions:
Europe Latin America
Languages Spoken: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian
Maria Abranches works as an independent documentary photographer with a focus on human rights issues.
She grew up in close contact with visual and performing arts - with a father who was a painter and a mother involved in classical music - and received her first camera at the age of 6, a polaroid. She graduated in architecture from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Lisbon in 2016. In 2017, she interned at the Catalan studio RCR Arquitectes – Pritzker Prize 2017 winners – and began working at the studio of architect Frederico Valsassina, where she remained for 3 years. She completed the photography course at ArCo (2020-2022), which opened doors for an internship at the newspaper Público and led her to dedicate herself exclusively to photography. She photographed and followed the production of "Pele Escura" (2021), a film by Graça Castanheira that reflects on center and periphery, black and white, racism, and inclusion. Her project "Trançar o Mundo" (2022) was born from meeting four Afro-descendant hairdressers from the Intendente area, on the occasion of the 14th Edition of the Intendente Photographic Narratives, guided and curated by Pauliana Valente Pimentel and Patrícia Craveiro Lopes, resulting in an exhibition at Casa Independente. The contact with these realities had a catalytic effect on what would become the central theme of her photographic reflection: racialized communities, structural racism, and Portuguese colonialism. In 2023, she was selected for the 5th Edition of the Narrative Masterclass, led by photographer Mário Cruz, where she developed the project "MARIA".
She collaborates with various publications and cultural entities such as the newspaper Público, Reuters Agency, The Guardian, and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, among others.
She grew up in close contact with visual and performing arts - with a father who was a painter and a mother involved in classical music - and received her first camera at the age of 6, a polaroid. She graduated in architecture from the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Lisbon in 2016. In 2017, she interned at the Catalan studio RCR Arquitectes – Pritzker Prize 2017 winners – and began working at the studio of architect Frederico Valsassina, where she remained for 3 years. She completed the photography course at ArCo (2020-2022), which opened doors for an internship at the newspaper Público and led her to dedicate herself exclusively to photography. She photographed and followed the production of "Pele Escura" (2021), a film by Graça Castanheira that reflects on center and periphery, black and white, racism, and inclusion. Her project "Trançar o Mundo" (2022) was born from meeting four Afro-descendant hairdressers from the Intendente area, on the occasion of the 14th Edition of the Intendente Photographic Narratives, guided and curated by Pauliana Valente Pimentel and Patrícia Craveiro Lopes, resulting in an exhibition at Casa Independente. The contact with these realities had a catalytic effect on what would become the central theme of her photographic reflection: racialized communities, structural racism, and Portuguese colonialism. In 2023, she was selected for the 5th Edition of the Narrative Masterclass, led by photographer Mário Cruz, where she developed the project "MARIA".
She collaborates with various publications and cultural entities such as the newspaper Público, Reuters Agency, The Guardian, and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, among others.