Guilherme Botelho was born in São Paulo and spent his childhood moving between Colombia, Costa Rica, and the United States. These formative years, lived between Latin America and the U.S., shaped his curiosity and sensitivity to presence—how individuals inhabit space regardless of geography, social condition, or environment. His perspective centers on bodies, gestures, and silences occupying space, rooted less in place than in the experience of presence.
He studied photography in the United States with photographer and visual artist Tereza Diehl, and later at the Institute of Photographic Studies of Catalonia in Barcelona, a city that would become one of several adopted homes in a life defined by transit. For the past ten-plus years, he has traveled the world as a humanitarian worker, bringing his keen awareness of presence and human connection to diverse communities around the globe. Working in some of the most acute humanitarian crises of our time — Gaza, Somaliland, Libya, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is not a parallel life to his photography; it is the same life. The camera goes where the work takes him, and the work takes him where most people cannot or will not look.
Botelho’s work moves through observation and distance, where fragments, gestures, and atmospheres build a quiet narrative. Images emerge as traces—of time, movement, and distance—narratives that remain open and suspended. His artistic approach is shaped by fragments, repetition, and subtle continuities, constructing a visual language that is both personal and reflective.
He is currently developing two projects:
Exaltación a fragmentos precarios reflects on time, technology, and the gradual erosion of human contact. Through an approach close to urban impressionism, focusing on fragmentation, speed, and the density of contemporary cities. Technology, repetition, and displacement shape a visual field where connection becomes fragile. The images suggest spaces that are at once familiar and impenetrable, leaning toward density and interruption—urban spaces that resist clarity, where the visible feels partial and unstable.
Só depois do carnaval unfolds as a visual portrait of Brazil. Moving away from spectacle, the project lingers in what remains—everyday moments, subtle transitions, and the underlying textures of daily life shaped through the author’s gaze. Beyond celebration, it turns to the quiet persistence of Brazilian life—its pauses, textures, and subtle continuities. What remains is not an event, but a state: something lived, almost unnoticed.