I was born in Porto Alegre (1959), capital city of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost Brazil State, on the border of Uruguay and Argentina.

My high school was the Instituto Educacional João XXIII (1977); and my B.A. in Social Sciences, in the Federal University of Rio Grande Sul (UFRGS) in 1985.

I got my M.A in Social Anthropology (Institute of Philosophy and Humanities/Department of Anthropology) from the same University in 1996. And I am also professor in the Department of Visual Arts of the Institute of Fine Arts of UFRGS, since 1994.

I work with photography since 1975: as a journalistic photographer associated at COOJORNAL - former Cooperative Society of the Journalists of Porto Alegre (1980), after for one of the branches of Jornal do Brasil from Rio de Janeiro until 1985, as well as for one of the branches of the IstoÉ magazine from São Paulo. In 1987, I created my own Photo Agency named Photon/Fotografia e Notícia (Photon/Photography and News).
I am also free-lancer photographer for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

I received my Doctorship degree in Ethnology (2002) by the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Visuelle et Sonore du Monde Contemporain attaché of Université de Paris 7 - Denis-Diderot, with a subvention of National Council for Scientific and Technologic Development (CNPq) - of a Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.