About Chantal James

Chantal received a BFA in photography from Parsons School of Design in NYC (1999), she studied with Charles Harbutt and Vik Muniz. She is a researcher, visual storyteller and is engaged in investigating narratives of power, visuality, aesthetics and violence, attempting to reveal what lies beneath the colonial debris in Latin America and the Carribbean. She is the co-founder and editor in chief of La Rampa Magazine.

In 2000 she worked for a Canadian-Cuban publishing house Lugus Libros in Havana, Cuba. In 2002 she co-founded La Rampa, a photographic publication exploring visual story-telling and decolonial aesthetics in Latin American and the Caribbean. She worked as creative director and photographed issues in Haiti, Cuba and Brazil.

Chantal exhibited work from Haiti Cherie (the Haitian issue of La Rampa) at the Diaspora Vibe Gallery, (Miami Basel) in 2003. Haiti Cherie, was officially launched in 2004 at the Washington DC, Folk Life Festival dedicated to the bicentennial of the Haitian Revolution.

She co-founded Ato Studios in Rio de Janeiro in 2008 – a multimedia and communications studio where she produced  short films and photographic essays on social and human rights issues. She also worked as an activist and youth educator from 2005-2010 while producing The Undesirables  a multimedia project about children living in a sewer on Ipanema Beach. It was a feature exhibit at the Contact Photographic Festival in Toronto, Canada ( 2011).

Chantal is a Brazilian resident, born in Toronto, Canada of mixed Guyanese and Welsh heritage. She is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil and Lisbon, Portugal.