03/09/2026
LA SANTA
A collaboration between French artist and set designer Manon Simonot and Brazilian photographer Pedro Podestá, La Santa is part of a larger photographic project that will eventually take the form of a book.
The project explores portraiture through mystical and religious symbolism, creating images in which the person and the symbol begin to merge.
The symbols are not simply decoration. They become a kind of catalyst, transforming the subject into something else: a saint, an orixá, a spiritual entity, a superhero, or perhaps a figure that has no name.
Somewhere between the person being photographed and the photographer’s gaze, a third reality begins to appear. A space where fiction, imagination and identity overlap, and where something unexpectedly true can emerge from something entirely constructed.
Each portrait becomes a kind of tarot card: open, intuitive and without a single meaning. The image is an invitation to project, interpret and discover, not only who the person might become, but perhaps something about who they already are.
