Diego Herculano was born in 1984, in the city of Garanhuns, northeast Brazil.
In 2010, after leaving the army and becoming a photographer, he traveled to South America to discover and photograph other cultures. In 2013, he starts working as staff at the ANF Agency, in Bolivia, and also as a freelancer for Reuters and AFKA. In 2016, during the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Herculano recorded drug dealers in the city's favelas carrying guns with Olympic stickers, in an unprecedented view of the city during the events.
In 2018, he was in Spain documenting the routine of wild boar hunters in the Basque Country. Also at the end of 2018, with the news that Russia had hijacked a Ukrainian ship, he went to Kiev and soon after to Donbass, in order to photograph the daily lives of Ukrainian soldiers. This conflict culminated in the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a fact that was also documented by him.
Prejudice of class, race, gender, poverty and social conflicts are some of the themes that Diego Herculano photographed throughout his career, and continues to photograph until now, always using aesthetics to attract the world's attention to important themes, without forgetting the reported content.
He worked and works as a freelancer for several national and international vehicles, such as Folha de São Paulo, O Globo, El Pais and Associated Press Agency, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Presse-Agentur and Redux Pictures. Currently living in China, in the city of Guangzhou, where he documents Chinese society and the process of social change throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.