Photos of everyday life in a barbershop in Rio’s largest favela

If beauty is often imagined as adornment – a private ritual of self-regard – in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, it’s a daily act of communion, shared and social. At the heart of this aesthetic ecosystem is the barbershop of Peterson Oliveira de Santos, known locally as Maquininha du Corte, a place which draws people from across the neighbourhood for his distinctive carioca cuts. Over several months, photographer Nadia Krawiecka lived within his world, documenting the rhythms of the shop and the community that gathers around it. What emerges is not just a portrait of a place, but a meditation on the human choreography of beauty, trust, and intimacy as they take form together.

Living just two minutes from the barbershop, Krawiecka was drawn by Maquininha’s distinctive presence and the magnetism of his space – perpetually alive with music and a constant gathering of kids. “He always looks so cool – nice hairstyle, tattoos, cool style,” she recalls, “so I approached him, and asked in my broken Portuguese, if I could take some photos of the place.” Though Maquininha was impressed by her portfolio, the relationship took time: trust was built gradually through mutual curiosity and an everyday proximity that, over time, made it easier for the barber to let her in.

There is a distinctive visual language that defines the shop – rooted in carioca identity, the term for anyone from Rio, and maintained with a near-religious precision. Maquininha’s speciality is the reflexo de bolinha: tiny bleached dots aligned with meticulous care along the hairline. “You see it everywhere in Rocinha,” Krawiecka says, “Fade, bleach, eyebrows done – everything is precise.” For Maquininha, this attention to detail is more than personal style; it’s cultural expression. “Being a barber is my way of expressing being Brazilian, and especially carioca,” he explains, “Rio’s look is far bolder than what outsiders usually wear.” The aesthetic code is hyper-local, and sustained not through fashion but through rhythm, care, and repetition.

The photographs, like the daily life of the shop, follow their own pace, outside of direction. No image was staged; instead, Krawiecka waited for Maquininha’s cues – where to shoot, where to stand, what moment to hold. “It was always him who decided,” she explains, “He’d tell me, ‘Come now,’ or, ‘Let’s go up to the rooftop.’” Moving between images of the barber at work and portraits of the kids who gather there, the photographs preserve the fierce sense of pride Maquininha and his community hold in both their appearance and the space they’ve created. Between Krawiecka and Maquininha, it became less about authorship than alignment: an ongoing exchange between two people with different tools but a shared understanding of how someone might want to be seen.

As the kids who hung around the shop began to recognise Krawiecka as part of their circle, they started asking to borrow her camera, mimicking the gestures they’d seen her use. Others asked to be photographed – not with posed instruction but with the same attention Maquininha insisted on: hair freshly bleached, eyebrows shaped, and outfits carefully chosen. Beauty, in Krawiecka’s photographs, is both decorative and deliberate: a way for the kids to take up space, and to be recorded on their own terms.

For Krawiecka, the barbershop is less of a place than a pulse of the favela: of the people, of pride, of daily attention to detail that holds a person, and their community, together. While some might consider a hairstyle as simply cosmetic, for Maquininha, it is a marker of care, connection, and being seen and affirmed. “Human beings were made for this,” the barber reflects, “Human beings were made to be beautiful and for other people to compliment them… so if a gringo wants to come here and get into the Rio vibe, I’m totally in favour.”

Visit the gallery above for a closer look.