Photographer Luiza Segulem Challenges Norms with Mobile Studio Project in São Paulo

Luiza Segulem, a photographer with a background in photojournalism at Folha de S.Paulo and magazines like Brasileiros and ARTE!Brasileiros, launched a project in March of last year after a climbing accident reduced her mobility. She created a portable photographic studio with a backdrop set at her eye level when seated in a wheelchair, approximately 1.40 meters high, to invite passersby in various São Paulo locations to pose. Her work, which integrates the 34th edition of the Centro Cultural São Paulo's Exhibition Program inaugurated on Saturday the 23rd, questions naturalized patterns of body circulation and presence in urban space. Segulem's practice, informed by her study of psychoanalysis, explores scales and perspectives, deconstructing traditional portrait conventions linked to power and social class. She began the project as a way to re-engage with the city, circulating through areas like Praça da República, Guarapiranga, Zona Norte, Parque do Trote, the Bixiga market, Oscar Freire, and Iguatemi. The project represents a return to photography after years away from photojournalism, becoming a critical exercise on social framing and the reinvention of the visible.