Biography

Araquém Alcântara was born in Florianópolis on January 16, 1951. It was in Santos, where he studied journalism, that he began to photograph. Self-taught in photography, he entered the School of Journalism at the University of Santos in 1970 and worked at O Estado de S. Paulo, Jornal da Tarde, O Globo and IstoÉ.

In 1979, he made his first environmental reportage, in Juréia, São Paulo. In 1980, he traveled to the Amazon for the first time, and by 2010 he had made more than 70 trips. In the 1980s, he photographed Cubatão and took part in protests against nuclear power plants. From the end of that decade until 1998, he crossed the country to photograph every national park in Brazil, the first photographer to do so, according to his official website. TerraBrasil was born from that road.

TerraBrasil, published in the 1990s by DBA and Melhoramentos, is now in its 13th edition and has sold about 100 thousand copies, according to his official website, which presents it as the best-selling photography book in the country.

Other titles mark his career: Santos (1992), Brasil iluminado (2000), Brasileiros (2004), Sertão sem fim (2009), Mais Médicos (2015), Jaguaretê (2017) and Amazônia das Crianças (2023), his first children's book, made on a 93-day expedition in which 15 children from six states share their everyday lives. In Mais Médicos, he portrayed the program in 19 states and 38 cities over the course of a year.

That makes more than 60 books, more than 70 solo exhibitions and more than 30 national and international awards, among them the Dorothy Stang Prize (2007), the Von Martius Prize from the Brazil-Germany Chamber of Commerce, and the APCA Award, with Cristiano Mascaro, for the exhibition Saudade Moderna.

His work is in collections including MASP, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, MAM-SP, Centre Pompidou (Paris), the British Museum (London) and the Museu do Café in Kobe (Japan), according to his official website and the press. The press describes him as a pioneer of nature photography. He prefers to be called a Brazilian photographer.

In 2024, the Pinacoteca Benedicto Calixto in Santos hosted the retrospective Araquém Alcântara: 50 anos de fotografia. On November 8, 2025, the Museu da Fotografia Fortaleza opened Crônicas da Beleza e do Horror. On June 1, 2026, the Espaço Cultural do STJ in Brasília opened O Brasil de Araquém Alcântara, curated by Eder Chiodetto, and launched the book 50 anos de fotografia (Paisagem Distribuidora), with more than 200 photographs.