Caatinga, from the Tupi-Guarani “ka’a-tinga”, means “white forest” or “thin forest”, the name of the biome that characterizes the semi-arid region of northeastern Brazil.

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Dry Lives in Times of Rain is a film accompanied by a series of photographs created during a family trip to the villages of Bate Pé and Lagoa Suja, districts of Vitória da Conquista, in Bahia, Brazil.

I returned to Bahia after ten years to reconnect with my family and my origins. I arrived on the same day my maternal grandfather, Leoni Ferreira Silva, passed away. From that moment on, I began documenting everything around me — my family, my grandmothers’ houses, the landscapes, and small everyday moments.

The film and photographs were created spontaneously using a simple pocket camera, as an attempt to preserve those days and the memories shared with my family.

The project emerges from the intersection of grief, memory, and belonging, seeking to preserve fragments of time lived among my loved ones, documenting the place where my family’s history also shapes my own.