Born in Belém, Pará, in 1965, Paulo Santos began photographing at a very young age, at 14, when he was active in the Student Secondary School Movement, documenting the group's meetings and activities. "I started my career with political life, in the middle of the military dictatorship, also working in the alternative press," he recalls.

In the early 1980's, he developed works for Ágil Fotojornalismo agency, based in Brasília, and for the magazine Resistência, where he highlights the photographic reportage he did with rural workers in the region of the Araguaia guerrilla war. Later, he worked for the newspaper O Liberal and took part in the project "Research and Preservation of Historical Photography in Pará", of the National Art Foundation - Funarte, and the Institute for National Artistic and Historical Heritage - IPHAN.

In 1992, the professional set up a company focused on professional photography and, in the last years, reinvented the enterprise and developed the Acervo H website, which gathers iconographic heritage built along decades by photographers, documentarists, journalists and researchers.

He specialized in photojournalism and counts in his portfolio news published in important media in Brazil and abroad, such as O Globo, Folha de São Paulo, Washington Post, Le Monde, El País, and agencies such as Associated Press and Reuters.

"The themes that I started to address in my career were related to the transformations of the Amazon and the socio-environmental conflicts present in the region. My goal is to focus on subjects that are of interest to the community and that can denounce the degradation of the forest, exalting the importance of biodiversity," explains Paulo Santos.

Amazônia: Um lugar rico, com os piores IDHs do Brasil