Maria Nunes is a Trinidad and Tobago photographer, filmmaker and producer who documents aspects of Caribbean cultural heritage. She is acclaimed for her work covering festivals, traditional Carnival, steelband, calypso, and the performing arts.

Her interest in the arts draws inspiration from her love of music which has led to work very closely with Trinbagonian jazz trumpeter and bandleader, Etienne Charles, to document the creation of two of his compositional works, the San Jose Suite and Carnival: Sound of a People. She has also travelled with him to West Africa, as well as Central and South America to document some of his most recent research.

In 2018 her first book, In a World of Their Own: Carnival Dreamers and Makers, Photographs by Maria Nunes, was published in Trinidad and Tobago by Robert and Christopher Publishers.

Since 2019 she has expanded her documentation of Carnival traditions to Grenada, Dominica and Montserrat and will continue to explore the carnival traditions of the Caribbean as a major focus in her work.

Her longstanding work in documenting steelpan culture in Trinidad and Tobago now extends to producing an online video series for Mark Loquan Music called “A Better Tomorrow”: Kareem Brown (2021), Women in Pan (2022) and Duvone Stewart, The Man Behind the Music (2023).

In 2021 she was named Laureate, Arts and Letters by the ANSA Caribbean Awards of Excellence.