Isis Rigueira Medeiros

Isis Medeiros is a Brazilian documentary photographer, filmmaker, and activist. Born in 1989 in Ponte Nova, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, she has built an engaged artistic practice at the intersection of art, collective memory, and socio-environmental struggles, both in Brazil and internationally.

She holds a degree in Design from the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG), where she first trained in visual arts before turning to photography. She later deepened her practice through photography studies at the University of Malta, reinforcing the international dimension of her work.

Self-defined as a "popular photographer", Isis Medeiros documents social and political movements, feminist struggles, and the consequences of socio-environmental crimes — most notably the mining disasters of Mariana and Brumadinho in Minas Gerais. Her gaze is explicitly non-neutral: she positions herself as present to "bear witness and denounce", making visible corporate negligence, state violence, and human rights violations. Through photography, video, and contemporary art projects, she explores the memory of territories marked by destruction, the grief of affected communities, and the forms of resistance that emerge in their wake.

Between 2016 and 2018, she created the project "Mulheres Cabulosas da História" (Incredible Women of History) — a series of nearly 100 photographic reinterpretations honouring remarkable women, which went on to receive recognition. In 2018, she co-founded the national network "Fotografia pela Democracia", bringing together photographers committed to democracy and human rights in Brazil. She is also a member of the fotocoletiva Mamana and collaborates with major media outlets and organisations, including National Geographic, Folha de S.Paulo, The Intercept Brasil, BBC, Greenpeace, and Brasil de Fato.

In 2023, she published her first book, "15:30", a visual work revisiting the consequences of the 2015 Mariana mining crime, centering the stories and faces of the people affected. For Isis Medeiros, documentary photography is above all a tool for memory, resistance, and justice — in service of women, communities impacted by extractivism, and popular movements across Latin America.

As part of the Les Gardiennes de la Mer artistic residency at Résidences Rocabella, Isis Medeiros turns her lens toward a new element: the sea. A space of memory, dispersal, and resistance, the ocean resonates deeply with her documentary practice, which has always centred wounded territories and the communities that cling to them.

Far from the toxic mudflows that devastated Minas Gerais, yet carrying the same attentiveness to bodies, landscapes, and threatened memories, she explores here what the sea reveals about the relationship between people and their environment — the fragility of natural balances, the silent violence exerted on coastal territories, and the enduring strength of those who inhabit them. Through photography and video, Isis Medeiros continues her work of visual testimony and collective memory, questioning how environmental crises — whether mining disasters or maritime threats — shape lives, communities, and the imagination of possible futures.