The Turquoise Shadow is the photographic practice of Portuguese artist Carlos da Silva, exploring the emotional relationships between people and the worlds they inhabit.

As an immigrant, da Silva experienced an early disruption of any fixed sense of place, creating a lasting awareness of existing between places. Rather than narrowing his perspective inward, that experience cultivated a heightened sensitivity to how others inhabit the world. His photographs are guided by a quiet curiosity about the often unspoken relationships between people and the places they occupy.

Rather than documenting people or landscapes independently, the work seeks to evoke the emotional space that exists between them. Atmosphere, light, distance, and scale become ways of exploring presence, perception, belonging, and the subtle ways identity is shaped through our relationship with place.

Born in Portugal and later immigrating to the United States, da Silva's experience of moving between cultures continues to inform both his life and creative practice. He later spent several years living in Hawai‘i, where the relationship between people, ocean, landscape, and culture became an important part of his photographic experience.

His photographs are featured throughout NALU, published in 2026 by Clarkson Potter / Penguin Random House. The book continues his connection to Hawai‘i, the ocean, and surf culture while bringing his photographic work into a broader publishing context.

Before photography became his primary medium, da Silva spent more than a decade working professionally in graphic design and creative direction in Seattle. His design career included work for Microsoft as well as creative direction within the independent music industry, where he developed visual identities and design across multiple record labels, artists, releases, and cultural projects.

He also worked extensively in music, composition, and sound. Although the mediums have changed over the course of his career, the underlying inquiry has remained remarkably consistent: an exploration of atmosphere, perception, and the ways environments shape identity and experience.

His sound works have been commissioned by galleries and cultural institutions, while musical projects were released internationally through numerous record labels.