Sandra Dantas was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She completed a postgraduate course in Photography in 2015 at UCAM (Cândido Mendes University) in Rio de Janeiro. Sandra has a specific interest in documentary photography and visual narratives.
November 5, 2015, a tailings dam of the Samarco mining company burst, releasing millions of tons of toxic mud. The dam breach occurred in the district of Mariana, a small town in Minas Gerais, a mineral-rich state of Brazil. The country's worst environmental disaster destroyed several rural communities near the "Rio Doce" river, in the countryside of Mariana. It killed 19 people, left hundreds homeless, and polluted around 500km of the "Rio Doce", the region's most important river. This photo essay shows a kind of archaeology of the disaster, and how the life of this population was destroyed along with the Rio Doce.