Biography

Born in Lousã on 10 December 1980, he is a history teacher, photographer, traveller and travel writer. In 2000, he started working for the local fortnightly newspaper Jornal Trevim, where he won first prize and an Honourable Mention in a photography competition. With the money he made, he left shortly afterwards for Europe on an InterRail. In 2002 he began a new phase in his life when he left for Siena, Italy, to live there for a year under the Erasmus university programme. In the following years, he travelled with his cameras throughout Europe and the Middle East (Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Egypt). He leaves in the autumn of 2007 for the Azores to teach there. He'll take the opportunity to visit the United States and in 2009 he'll head to Cuba to get a personal view of Fidel's island. The following year, he travelled to Russia. He travelled around China in 2011 and the following year he was fascinated by Iran. He took a boat to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and then passed through Oman to get his feet wet in the Indian Ocean. In 2013, he set off to discover the Caucasus, travelling through Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the self-proclaimed independent republics of Abkhazia and the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. In 2014, he travelled to Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, a highly sensitive territory in constant dispute. In the following years, he travelled to Central Asia, to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but also to Thailand and Cambodia, India and China. In 2018, he flew to Tehran and from there to Beijing, via Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan until he entered China, a journey of around 12,000 kilometres. Later, he travelled through Pakistan and Iraq. He has won several national and international photography awards, including the PHOCUS Photography Grand Prix, organised by the Silk Road Universities Network in Seoul in 2020. He is currently the travel leader of Fotoadrenalina, a photographic project that promotes experiences in this area around the world. She also gives talks at various schools and associations on topics such as 25 April, the Silk Road, interculturalism and the Balkans. She also organises photography and travel writing workshops at various institutions.