There is nothing ordinary about Camila Gattamelati’s journey into photography. She vividly remembers standing on stage in her first acting class in Santiago, Chile, and being asked by her teacher to scream. “I couldn’t do it,” she says. “It was like something was holding me back with all its strength, and even though I tried so hard, my throat would stay closed.”

Every week, her teacher made the same request, and she tried and failed until suddenly, a breakthrough. “That was the moment I realised everything I had inside me,” she says earnestly. “From that moment, I knew I wanted to experience other lives and stories through my body. I’ve learnt to do that through photography and acting.”

Gattamelati — now based in Barcelona — is a hybrid creative, splitting her time between photography, acting, and journalism, three disciplines that overlap and feed each other in generative and unexpected ways. She has her own theatre company in Chile and describes the intersection of theatre and photography as “deeply intimate and full of possibility, enabling us to experience reality in a more real way”. Despite being relatively early in her photography career, the potency of performance and its ability to catalyse a moment or feeling can be felt throughout Gattamelati’s portfolio.