Distance We Could Walk

We left our backpacks in Vale do Capão and set out across the Chapada Diamantina with only what we needed for a week. We had heard stories about the Vale do Pati, about walking for days, sleeping in family houses, and moving through a landscape that felt almost unreal. It sounded distant, almost impossible.

The days quickly became physical. Heat, humidity, long climbs, and dense vegetation that had to be pushed through step by step. We walked without a guide, relying only on maps on our phones, and every decision felt important. At times it was exhausting, but our bodies adapted. We felt strong, alert, completely present.

I photographed instinctively. Not to document the place, but to hold onto what we were experiencing. The scale of the mountains we did not think we could climb, the small encounters along the way, the people living within that landscape, the details that would otherwise disappear. I wanted to remember.

One day we climbed Morro do Castelo. It felt almost vertical, a long sequence of doubt and effort. When we reached the top, we were alone. Later, from below, we looked back at it, at something that had seemed impossible, and realised we had crossed it. That moment stayed with me.

Over the course of the journey, distance became something tangible. One hundred kilometres on foot, each day unfolding slowly, each step earned. The vastness of the landscape and the intimacy of its details began to coexist. The immensity of where we were, and the smallness of our presence within it.

These photographs are fragments of that experience. A personal journey through a place that felt, at times, beyond us, and yet became something we moved through, step by step.