Wilson Vieira is a photographer, storyteller, and scientist based in Germany. At 20 years he acquired his first camera and traveled to Brazil to join a research project in the Amazonian rainforest, where he stayed for three months. Since then, he joined several scientific expeditions in remote places of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Principe, where he conducted his research and documented the stories and experiences of those travels. Overall, he has a cumulative experience of two years living in “perpetually-wet, suffocating-hot, mosquito-packed” rainforest environments.

As a photographer and storyteller, he aims to unveil the bond between humans and nature by 1) documenting the livelihoods of traditional communities around the world and 2) portraying outdoor adventure sports (such as rock climbing, mountaineering, hiking, surfing) as manifestations of the physical, psychological, and spiritual ways humans interact with the natural world.

As a scientist, he conducts research at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, working in the remote Congolese rainforest with hunter-gatherer BaYaka and farming-fisherman Bandongo communities. He aims to understand how culture and the natural environment shape human problem-solving skills and adaptability.

In 2023 he became a Fellow member of The Explorers Club.