Across Latin America, queer life is often flattened into stereotype, with mainstream portrayals focusing on hardship or spectacle and reducing entire communities to “tropical imagery, poverty, violence, Carnaval, or exoticism.” But beneath those narratives are quieter, more layered realities shaped by resilience, intimacy and survival.

For photographer Asafe Ghalib, Under The Same Sun began with a return home after more than a decade in London. “I had built my career abroad, but at some point I started asking myself what I could give back to the places and communities that shaped me,” he says.

Returning to Rio, he began photographing again instinctively, “without overthinking it,” as a way of reconnecting with language, memory and a younger queer generation. What started in Brazil soon expanded into a three-year journey across seven Latin American countries, tracing migration, belonging and chosen family through portraits and conversations that move between vastly different cultural and political realities.

Shot with intimacy and openness, Under The Same Sun resists fixed ideas of queer Latin America, centring people on their own terms and what they want others to understand about their lives. Below, we speak with the photographer about return, community and the emotional landscapes behind the work.