About Vavá Ribeiro
Vavá Ribeiro is a Brazilian visual artist and photographer working at the intersection of documentary, portraiture, and folklore. Born in Rio de Janeiro, he developed his eye photographing youth culture and beach life in natural light—an aesthetic that continues to shape his practice. After studying painting and photography, he moved to New York, where he began his career as a photojournalist before transitioning to long-form projects that blend realism with theatricality.
His recent work, Encantado: Echoes of the Invisible Amazon, explores Amazonian myth, colonial history, and climate change through hybrid storytelling centered on the pink river dolphin. Ribeiro received the Jury’s Special Prize at the Hyères Festival and was named one of PDN’s 30 emerging photographers. His work has appeared in i-D, Atmos, and The New York Times Magazine. His first book, North Shore (Jesus Blue Books, 2019), is a fiction-realist essay set on Hawaii’s North Shore—an echo of his childhood vision of a surf utopia. He lives between New York and Rio de Janeiro.
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