Maria Daniel Balcazar is a documentary and fine art photographer who specializes in long term photographic essays. Most of her projects focus on migrations and the vitality of traditions and their continuous remaking of identity. She attempts to transmit the cultural interweaving as the result of the common human experience of migration, because of economic and political challenges, hardship, and violence. But her work also highlights the individual threads that are the cultural legacy that allows people to survive and thrive.
She has studied fine arts, languages, journalism, and photography. Her work has been exhibited in universities, galleries, international festivals, and museums in different cities in the United States, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Chile.
She has published three books:
Kilombo is a tribute to Afro-Brazilians and their capacity to tap into their roots and overcome adversity. The Heirs of Dawn / Herederos del Alba, illustrates from pre-colonial times to the present, adapted through the experience of colonialism, legends, history, and popular social commentary that come together as the most important festivity in Bolivia, Carnaval de Oruro. Nuances of your gaze / Matices de tu mirada is a visual narrative honoring the poetry of Julia de Burgos, an Afro-Caribbean civil rights activist from the early 20th Century.
She is currently working on the publication of “Invisible Custodians”, a book which documents the cultural patrimony in twelve different communities in the Amazon and River Plate basins in Bolivia.