Documentary photographer Toni Pires is based in São Paulo, Brazil, but his work has always taken him across borders and between worlds. For more than thirty years, he has used photojournalism to draw closer to people, cultures, and realities different from his own, returning from those encounters with stories. His photography offers no ready-made answers. It begins with a desire to understand what he finds through presence, careful listening, and attention to events as they unfold.

A photojournalist, photo editor, researcher, and creative director, Pires has built his career at the intersection of practice, critical inquiry, and visual storytelling. He spent twenty years at Folha de S.Paulo, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, where he worked as a staff photojournalist, assignments editor, and chief photography editor. That experience shaped a principle that continues to guide his work: editing begins long before the shutter is released.

Pires has covered stories across six continents, including World Cups, international summits, and meetings of heads of state. He has traveled to Antarctica three times. One of those assignments resulted in “No Coração da Antártida” (“In the Heart of Antarctica”), which won Brazil’s prestigious Esso Award for Photography. As an editor, he coordinated coverage of five World Cups and five Olympic Games. His experience in the field and at the editing desk taught him that the power of an image depends not only on the moment itself, but also on access, trust, context, and the choices that shape how a story reaches the public.

In 2018, a grant from the European Journalism Centre supported Education in Transition, his year-long documentary project on transgender teachers across Latin America, published in Brazil, Portugal, Germany, France, and other countries.

He lived in China for two years and has developed journalistic, editorial, cultural, and institutional projects. Today, he works as a photojournalist, editor, researcher, curator, and creative director on projects that bring together photography, narrative, memory, and communication. As president of ARFOC-SP, the Association of Photojournalists and Cinematographers of São Paulo State, he leads initiatives devoted to professional education, the preservation of photographic memory, and the advancement of photojournalism. His work also includes exhibitions, lectures, and research into visual language, editing, and emerging technologies.

Pires holds degrees in Economics and Journalism from São Paulo State University, Unesp, and completed postgraduate studies in Photography at Centro Universitário Senac and in Art History at Fundação Cásper Líbero.

For Toni Pires, the camera is a means of access. It opens doors, brings people closer, and carries responsibility. Photography begins with the relationship: the quality of the encounter, the attention given to others, and the choices that transform a fleeting moment into a narrative.

This is what keeps his work in motion: the curiosity of someone who believes that every story can reveal a different way of seeing the world.