Ana Cichowicz is a Brazilian artist and social anthropologist based in Berlin. She has extensive fieldwork experience with Kalderash Romani people in Brazil and Argentina. Her PhD research explored cinema, foreignness, and world-making practices through the films of Algerian Romani filmmaker Tony Gatlif.

After completing her PhD, Ana moved to Italy and later to Germany. It was during this migration process that her photographic practice intensified.

In 2022, Ana began to take photography more seriously, driven by the desire not only to study images academically but also to explore the practice of art-making.

Ana’s work emerges from dialogues between art, philosophy, and anthropology. Her research interests focus on the poetics of everyday (street) life, world-making practices, and foreignness and migration. Whether through photo performance, documentary photography, or street photography, her practice is marked by a constant reflection on the condition of the image itself—not just on the content captured, but on the form, the making, the process of creating a photograph, and what might emerge from this unfolding.

In her artistic practice, Ana seeks to create images that challenge the notion of photography as a medium revealing truths and essences that preexist the image. For her, the world is not a passive entity waiting to be “captured”; it is continuously brought into being through encounters among various bodies, including the camera. In this sense, Ana aims to compose photographs that elicit an engagement beyond mere attestations such as "This is a person," "This is a landscape," or "This is a street." Instead, by provoking questions like "What is this?" or "How did this come to be?" her work ultimately conveys, "This came into being."

Ana’s practice does not align with traditional dichotomies that oppose the real and the imaginary but instead explores the tensions between them, proposing photography as a bringing forth machine. In other words, an act capable of germinating one of the countless latent seeds of scenes, atmospheres, and worlds that, prior to the making of the photograph, existed only 'in potential.' It is not about portraying the real but about bringing things into being—a poetic and political gesture that opens fissures in the real, making way for life and new worlds to emerge.

Awards

2024 - "Always a little submerged" (Street Photography). Gold medal. The street photo of the year at the Paris International Street Photo Awards

2024 - "New Urban Species" (Street Photography) Honorable Mention at the Paris International Street Photo Awards

2024 - "Red Cloak" (Street Photography) Honorable Mention at the Paris International Street Photo Awards

2024 - "Look Through Any Window" (Street Photography) Selected as Juror's Pick at the Street Photographers Foundation Awards

2024 - "Look Through Any Window" (Street Photography) Selected as Juror's Pick at the Street Photographers Foundation Awards

2024 - "The Razor of Time" (Street Photography) Finalist at the Rome Photo Lab Award

2023 - "Look Through Any Window" (Street Photography) Honorable Mention at the Vienna International Photography Festival

2023 - "The City Soaks" (Street Photography) Honorable Mention at the Paris International Street Photo Awards

Group exhibitions

2024 - "Look Through Any Window" (Street Photography). The Best of Street Photographers Foundation. Iranian Artists Forum, Tehran, Iran, December, 2024

2024 - "Look Through Any Window" (Street Photography). Krem de Photographie," La Galerie Éphémère, Paris, France, December, 2024

2024 - "Doors" (Analog Collage/Experimental Photography) Virtual Exhibition "Conexiones Atemporales," Femgrafia, Mexico, November 2024

2024 - "Let the Sun In" (Street Photography) Festival Internacional de Fotografia de Campos do Jordão, Auditório Claudio Santoro, Campos do Jordão, Brazil, October 2024

2024 - "The Razor of Time" (Street Photography) Rome International Photo Festival, Villa Altieri, Rome, Italy, September 2024

2024 - "Look Through Any Window" (Street Photography) Group exhibition "100 Years 100 Women, A Street Photography Group Exhibition," MVAC du 7ème, Paris, France, June 2024

2024 - "Here Comes the Sun" (Street Photography) Group exhibition "A Global Street Photography Exhibition," Objects Centre of Photography & Film, Singapore, May–July 2024

2024 - "Portrait of Time" (Street Photography) Group exhibition "Xposure International Photo Festival," Expo Centre Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, February–March 2024

2023 - "Black Bird" (Street Photography) Group exhibition "HCSC Annual Exhibition," Heart Space, Ahmedabad, India, December 2023

2023 - "Studies of Impermanence" (Photography) Group exhibition "Anarchy," Ephemere Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, October 2023

2023 - "On Fabulating" (Photography Series) V Colóquio Antropologia em Performance, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil, October 2023

2023 - "Look Through Any Window" (Photography) Group exhibition "A Wall of Women by Women," Ballarat International Foto Festival, Ballarat, Australia, August–October 2023

2022 - "I Woke Up in a Dream" (Photography) Virtual Exhibition "Suenos," Femgrafia, Mexico, October 2022

2022 - "Go. Come" (Video Art) Group exhibition "The Cut-Up," Lite Haus Galerie, Berlin, Germany, June 9–24 2022

Publications

(2024) Photo featured in DES_Photomag, Vol. 5 

(2023) Essay titled "Em busca dos lampejos" published in Imagem Vertigem Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 2 

(2023) Photo included in the book “Anarchyº1”, published by Ephemere 

(2022) Photo Essay “Between Homes”, Impernent Earth, Issue V, December