Leticia Valverdes studied Fine Art and photography at London Metropolitan University. Her personal socially engaged photographic work concentrates on interactions with people and starts with deep listening. Focusing on simple ideas, she invites for participation, exploration of identity, self-compassion, curiosity and activism.
In the UK she has worked for many years in partnership with London based All Change Arts, a non-profit that brings artists and communities together. Abroad she tends to work in collaboration with communities as varied as a northern Portuguese Village and Amazonian Indigenous groups.
Her work has been featured in a number of group and solo shows in the UK and abroad and has been published in various magazines such as the Sunday Times Magazine, The Independent, Telegraph, Guardian, Marie Claire, Colors and and worked with institutions, charities and companies like the Wellcome, Save the Children, Oxfam, All Change Arts, YouTube among others
She has received various awards and grants for her work, among them The Royal Photographic Society Environmental Bursary, Portrait of Britain, Emergentes Award (Encontros da Imagem Portugal), Via Arts (given by Latin American and Iberian Embassies for UK based artists), the Ian Parry Award, Owen Rowley award, Arts Council Grants for the Arts and an IPRN fellowship.
She has had her work published in 3 monographs: “Brazilian Street Girls Invisible Lives' (Vision On, UK, 2000), “Dear Ana (Hurtwood-UK, 2022) and “And Now My Children Know (Ipsis-Brazi-2021l) and work included in books on the history of Latin American and Brazilian photography, various BBC books and most recent the Mindful Photographer (Thames and Hudson, UK, 2022), Looking at Trees (Hoxton Mini Press UK, 2023) and “Contemporary Photography as Collaboration” (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2024).
As well as her UK based work she develops photography and film projects with communities worldwide, especially in the in the Amazon focusing on indigenous conservation issues. She has recently worked with the BBC Planet Earth 3 series producing a story on female environmental protagonism in the conservation of the region and very recently directed a short film for the Earthshot.
symbolises the destruction of their land, yet the happiness contained in living in this territory while fighting to preserve it.
Proposed Project
Mercury contamination in the Amazon through the young eyes and hands of Munduruku Children. Through the eyes of young people we can engage other young people and wider groups in society that might not otherwise get involved in the important topics of conservation, climate change and biodiversity loss.
Climate Change-Amazon Conservation-Biodiversity- Indigenous human rights. The Munduruku indigenous population has been severely affected by mining activities in their land. With ever growing numbers of miners invading their territory, it has recently been found, by the Fiocruz foundation, that at least 60% of the Munduruku population has high toxic levels levels of mercury in their bodies. This project will aim to create a body of hybrid photographic work together with the Munduruku children of the village of Sawre Muybu, by the Tapajós river.
It starts with an invitation for intervention in their own photographic images, mark making that symbolises the destruction of their land, yet the happiness contained in living in this territory while fighting to preserve it.