After studying aeronautics in Italy, Walter Costa realised that the pilot career was less “romantic” than he thought. In 2009, while completing a degree in Politics and International Studies at Complutense University in Madrid, he started attending photography courses at Blank Paper school, where he also got involved in publications and editing. Studying their postgraduate programme in documentary photography gave him the opportunity to start merging image-making with his interest in visually investigating social issues in relation to power imbalances. Love and curiosity made him move to São Paulo in 2013, where besides working as a news and commercial photographer he started teaching editing and bookmaking while collaborating with several Brazilian and international authors in the development and editing of their photobook projects. In 2017 Costa founded Havaiana Papers, a distribution platform aimed at improving the circulation of Brazilian photobooks. As a curator, he was invited to organize a series of performatic lectures about photobooks for SOLAR Fotofestival (Fortaleza, BR) in December 2018 and was the guest curator of the sixth edition of En CMYK-Photobook Meeting organized by the Montevideo Center of Photography (UY) in March 2019. In 2018 Costa came back to Europe to join the first cohort of the MA Photography&Society at KABK/Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. With the aim of researching, discussing and finding new ways to use photography as a tool for public debate, he completed the program with a wider and more multi-disciplinary practice. In 2020-2021, the artist took part in FOTODOK’s talent support programme Lighthouse. Still based in The Netherlands, Costa keeps editing photobook projects while teaching at KABK and developing his personal projects.
