Matias Sauter Morera (b.1986 San José, Costa Rica)
Matías Sauter Morera is a Costa Rican photographer based between Berlin and Costa Rica. His work moves between documentary and fiction, exploring themes of identity, memory, and desire. He uses photography as a way to confront and create new realities.
After relocating to Berlin in 2012, he developed a deeper connection to the tropical landscapes of his childhood, leading him back to Costa Rica to create New World Tropics. This series, known for its lush, psychologically charged imagery, examines the emotional imprint of tropical nature on Costa Rican identity, challenging romanticized notions of paradise by embracing the contemporary jungle’s darkness, chaos, and mystery. “I seek to propose an identity rooted in the perpetual presence of tropical nature in our lives and its impact on our emotional states.”
Expanding his practice into speculative visual storytelling, Sauter Morera employs artificial intelligence and writing to construct fictionalized historical narratives. His ongoing series, Pegamachos, reimagines a little-known facet of Costa Rican queer history—an era in which rural men, particularly cowboys from the Guanacaste coast, engaged in discreet encounters with young gay men while maintaining outwardly heterosexual identities. Through AI-generated imagery and his written narratives, he fabricates an archive that blurs the boundaries between historical record, personal mythology, and fantasy.
Alongside his artistic practice, Sauter Morera works commercially, specializing in documentary, portrait, and fashion photography. His commissioned work has appeared in publications such as Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Cosmopolitan.
His photographs have been exhibited internationally, and pieces from Pegamachos are held in the collections of Beth Rudin DeWoody and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In 2025, an image from the series will be included in Queer Lens: A History of Photography, curated by Paul Martineau at the Getty Museum.
Sauter Morera is currently represented by Craig Krull Gallery in the United States and collaborates with DeCerca Gallery in Costa Rica.
Portrait by Daniela Linares Leandro