Amazônia

This picture shows an Amazonian landscape, where an impressive mass of clouds takes up three quarters of the image. The photo features five horizontal layers: water at the bottom, then a forest, which shelters the majority of the species living there, and a thin strip of clear sky. Above everything hovers a colossal mass of woolly clouds. They appear to be caught in the middle of an unstoppable steady procession. These look like ominous storm clouds, with a flat darker base and bulging sides displaying a wide range of shades of grays.

The top layer, further in the background, is made up of lighter clouds. It shows a few black spots, as if hastily sketched with a painter’s brush. This photo shows a frontal view of layered elements: water, wood, leaves, air, as well as invisible water droplets in the clouds.

The forested area doesn’t quite reach the right side of the picture, allowing for the water to go around it. There is more dense forest further out in the background.

The water in the foreground indicates that the shot was taken from a boat during a river trip, like many of the other pictures in this book by Sebastião Salgado. The surface of the water shows no agitation. Spots of light illuminate it here and there, alongside the dark reflections of the forest above it—a distant, luxuriant, impenetrable forest, without a bank, whose trees have disparate shapes and sizes and seem to come out straight out of the water. Some white tree trunks stand out, and the foliage appears in various nuances of gray, from dark to light.

The time of day is hard to tell. The wide sky has a majestic solemnity and calls to mind the dwellings of Greek gods. Overlapping clouds are hemmed in with grays and blacks and offer a powerful impression of grandeur and timelessness.

This is due to the natural and pristine beauty of the landscape and to the contrast between the flat tranquility of the water, matched by the thin strip of clear sky above the canopy, with the frozen effervescence of the main cloud mass, heavy with impending thunderstorms and tropical downpours, and relentlessly pursuing its glide above the rivers and forests.

This is a man in his twenties. His face is painted, and he is wearing a feathered headdress. He is calmly scrutinizing us. His ornated facial features give him a cold, regal expression.

His braided headdress is made of bamboo fibers and held together with feather barbs.

It forms an arc that goes down on both sides of his face.

The headdress is composed of a first row of short white feathers which form a sun around his face. The top feathers are black. The second row is also made of black feathers, long enough to disappear outside the frame.

The face paint splits the face in two: a dark and a light side. The lips and eyes are entirely covered in black, but the ears are not painted.

The left side of the face is entirely covered with dark pigment, with the neck just hatched in black. The dark and oily texture of the natural face paint combined with the brightness of the lighting bring out the arch of the eyebrows, the cheekbones, and the chin. The white part of the eyes is immaculate and contrasts with the surrounding blackened skin. The iris and pupil are cut horizontally by a thin line of white light, perhaps a reflection of the photographer’s portable studio’s lighting.

Sebastião Salgado usually sets up his studio under the trees with the help of his assistants. He first covers the floor with a tarp and then sets up a 6 × 9-meter piece of cloth to serve as background. “By separating the Indians from the luxuriance of the forest, the photographer tells us, these pictures show them in their full beauty and unique elegance.”

Let’s break down the details of this portrait…

The right side of the face is entirely covered with clear paint, except for the eye, which is coated with black pigment. Uneven black lines run across the upper forehead, the temporal area, and the right cheekbone. Four diagonals are traced under the left nostril, three others are painted under the lower lip.

Adão’s expression is solemn and tough, conveying unwavering integrity.

Without doubt, this picture expresses the pride of an independence, a culture and a memory regained by a people who, although in contact with the contemporary world, have now fully recovered their rituals, their ceremonies, and their ancestral language. The Yawanawá have become living proof that indigenous peoples who are able to control their lands can combine traditional culture and modernity.

We are looking at an aerial view of the Juruá River that winds through the forest. The river enters the frame through the lower left corner and follows a large curve, forming a shape reminiscent of a head, then exits to the right of the image.

The sky takes up the upper third of the picture.

Trees are clustered together and form a dense, tightly packed vegetation surface without a single gap. The light is stronger and whiter at the top of the trees but darkens in the depths of the woods.

The sky has two distinct layers. The first one, right above the forest, is light gray, peaceful, and uniform, spotted with small white cottony clouds. The layer above is darker and much more imposing. Its inky areas appear in various levels of dilution, with black streaks running across its lower white fringe.

On the left side of the image, in the distance, there is the curve of another river, perhaps the same Juruá River that still shimmers on the horizon in small clear spots.

As Sebastião Salgado states, this territory is larger than the European Union and entire sectors of it have never been photographed: “The almost unimaginable size of the Amazon region can only be truly felt from the air.”

The Brazilian army offered to help him reach the most isolated areas of the Amazon. The distances are such that only helicopters can cover all the regions, using dozens of scattered bases. “Seen from a plane or helicopter, notes the photographer, the equatorial forest suddenly becomes a gigantic green carpet with sinuous loops, the meanders of its lazy rivers. In the rainy season, this beautiful order is disrupted, because the rivers overflow by flooding the forest, sometimes over a hundred kilometers, or by creating lakes and lagoons to find their old beds—or form new ones—when the waters recede.”

All eight dark-skinned shamans are almost naked. A belt is tied around their hips and falls like a loincloth.

Three are sitting on stools in the front row.

They are, from left to right: Akutsapÿ, smoking a long cigar, about 60 years old (he is the only one not looking at us, head down), Takumã, and Makari, who appears somewhat younger.

Takumã is staring at us and is the central figure in this committee of shamans. His age and his higher stool make him stand out. At the time when the picture was taken, he was considered as the greatest shaman of the whole Xingu region. He wears a collar, a hat made of spotted animal skin, white feathers on his ears and armbands also adorned with feathers. His right hand is resting on his knee. His left hand is hanging between his thighs and holds a long thin cigar. Takumã and Akutsapÿ are not the only ones smoking: three of their six companions also have a cigar.

In the Kamayurá cultural tradition, only the pajés (the shamans) smoke tobacco, which they plant and grow themselves. They often use these same cigars during healing or divination rituals when they communicate with the spirits. Shamanism is a fundamental element of the Kamayurá culture. These practices are based on an animist conception of the world according to which animals, plants as well as certain inanimate objects have a soul capable of communicating and interacting with humans. Spiritual visions and travels have an important place in the Amazonian rituals, notably with the help of hallucinogenic drugs or tobacco in high doses.

Let’s go back to the group portrait…

Five stocky and muscular men stand behind Takumã. They are, from left to right:

Pirakumã is about 60 years old and stares at the camera while puffing on his cigar, looking somewhat distrustful.

Kanari seems younger, between 30 and 40. His arms are dangling. He looks serious.

Kanutari, probably near his seventies, smokes a cigar with his eyes half closed.

Kalalawá is leaning on a long stick, almost as tall as him and decorated with triangular geometric patterns. He is inhaling the smoke from his cigar and wearing a leather hat about 20 centimeters high. He looks about the same age as Takumã, the venerable central shaman, who is also wearing a hat.

Finally, on the far right, Pataku, in his thirties, has a wrestler’s build and relaxed arms, like Kanari. He also has two strips of paint on his torso with drawings in the shape of eyes, probably of a bright red obtained from the urucum [oo-roo-KOOM] shrub. The slightly drooping corners of his lips give him a sad look.

In addition to their belts, they all wear gaiters, probably made of vegetable fibers, and armbands of white cloth, some decorated with feathers. Except for Takumã, whose necklace is made of seeds collected in the forest, all wear tight rows of white shells around their necks, typical ornaments of the Upper Xingu culture.

Takumã has moved on to the spirit world on August 25, 2014.

Hand-to-hand combat scene in an indigenous village.

In the central foreground, two men in profile are wrestling, kneeling on the ground, both covered with body paint.

The body paint of the one on the left draws large dark diamonds, stretched over about thirty centimeters, going up from his calves to the middle of his chest. His opponent, on the right of the picture, has three large bands of white paint decorated with concentric circles: around the calf, the thigh and the abdomen.

Their shins are protected by gaiters made of vegetable fibers, and their hips have a belt of fabric tied on the front, with a piece of fabric falling like a loincloth. They’re holding on to each other, one by the nape of the neck, the other by the back of the head, their muscles bulging.

In the background, a man standing with his back to the fighters seems to be refereeing another fight. There are three other pairs of wrestlers, some on all fours, some standing, who form a semicircle around our two central athletes.

Groups from different villages take turns to compete. The warrior who touches the back of his opponent’s thigh or, better yet, knocks him down, wins the fight.

Behind the three pairs of wrestlers, another circle is formed by spectators, all males, with legs, buttocks and torsos naked, dressed in gaiters and loincloths.

Behind the spectators, in the background, there are the thatched roofs of two community huts, which must be about ten meters high.

The festival is held in the central dirt square of the Waurá village, whose communal houses are arranged in an oval perimeter. The square is the place where all public events take place: ceremonial fights like this one, funerals or even speeches given by the leaders.

Once the fights are over and the winners of the huka-huka wrestling matches are determined, the teenage girls of the village come out of seclusion and are presented to the whole community in a parade. They are led by two warriors playing long flutes. After being confined for a year in the darkness of their homes, they have long hair and completely white skin.

A hunting scene in the heart of the Amazonian Forest.

In the foreground, on the left, Typaramatxia Awá walks, looking up, carrying on his back the body of a monkey that he has just killed.

The man is in his thirties, with black hair and thick bangs that reach his eyebrows. A goatee, with a few white hairs, adorns the tip of his chin. He looks up to the treetops with a slight smile and mischievous eyes.

Typaramatxia Awá is naked. Two bracelets with four strings of small pearls adorn his wrists. These are the same pearls that are rolled up in an armband above his left bicep.

He carries a wooden bow, taller than himself, hanging over his shoulder.

He holds the right arm of the dead monkey in both hands. The monkey hangs behind his back, its head facing us. It’s over a meter tall. It is a white-faced saki with dark hair. Its sternum and left shoulder are pierced by two long wooden arrows which cross the image and disappear out of the frame by the lower and left edges of the photo.

Classified as critically endangered, the white-faced saki is endemic to Brazil, where it lives in the easternmost part of the Amazon Forest and feeds mainly on insects, leaves and fruits.

The expression of the hairless white face of the monkey is striking: its black eyes are still open; its drooping half-opened lips reveal a few teeth and seem to express a deep disappointment. The long hair around its head, especially around his jaw, gives him a venerable appearance. The primate’s expression contrasts with the grinning face of the hunter.

Monkey meat is one of the most sought-after sources of protein for many indigenous cultures in the Amazon. White-faced saki monkeys live in the treetops. To reach them, the hunter Typaramatxia Awá had to climb and move carefully on branches more than 30 meters high. He lured his prey by imitating its cry and shaking small branches. He had to hit his target with the first arrow to keep it from running away. Sometimes a second hunter climbs a nearby tree to snare the prey.

Kiripy-tan, walking behind Typaramatxia Awá[tee-para-MA-tshia a-WA], is on the right of the image and may have played that role. He is a young man of about fifteen years old who holds a bow taller than him as well as a few arrows. Kiripy-tan is staring at us, one arm dangling, looking somewhat surprised. He is entirely naked, behind his bow, and wearing plastic sandals.

The discovery of large iron ore deposits and illegal logging have led to the shrinking of the Awá-Guajá territory. It is increasingly difficult for them to find game in the forest. They often refrain from hunting, fearing violent attacks by loggers, and suffer from hunger. Organizations who fight for indigenous rights have claimed they were the victim of a real genocide.

This landscape was photographed frontally from a boat. The image is made up of three horizontal layers with very distinct textures: water, vegetation and clouds which dominate the scene.

In the foreground, at the bottom of the image, a thin strip of water reflects the vegetation of the trees whose trunks plunge directly into the water, as there are no visible banks.

Above it is the forest, which takes up a little less than a third of the photo and is generally dark, with a few lighter clusters of branches and leaves.

Emerging from the dense mass of the forest, the small black silhouette of a tree stands out against the sky in the center of the image.

Finally, the forest is entirely dominated by an impressive, very thick mass of clouds, where white formations contrast with bulges ranging from dark gray to pitch black, while other parts show sporadic touches of a sunny aura.

A large tree can draw water from a depth of 60 meters and release up to 1,000 liters a day. As this phenomenon is repeated in the Amazon on 400 to 600 billion trees, we understand that the forest generates a significant part of the water it will collect later.

One of the most extraordinary phenomena of the Amazon rainforest—and perhaps the least known—is what is colloquially known as “flying rivers.” These flying rivers carry more water than the Amazon itself. While 17 billion tons of water flow from the river into the Atlantic every day, scientists have estimated that, at the same time, 20 billion tons of water are rising into the atmosphere from the jungle and leaving the Amazon, earning it the nickname “Green Ocean.”

These seasonal cloud formations bring water to cities, industries, hydroelectric plants and farms thousands of kilometers away in southern Brazil, but also in Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. This means that a bad rainy season in the Amazon translates into a drought over much of the continent.

These flying rivers are vital to the economic well-being of tens of millions of people, especially in Brazil. They also have a great influence over global weather patterns and are themselves vulnerable to the effects of deforestation and global warming. Scientists estimate that due to the acceleration of these phenomena, the ground temperature of the Amazon basin has already increased by 1.5 degrees and is expected to increase by a further 2 degrees if current trends continue. Similarly, they fear that annual precipitation levels will decrease by 10-20% due to global warming.

Archipelago of Marjuá— In the meantime, in the immense sky, the stormy clouds are puffed up with spectacular bulges and gather as a herd above the forest, ready to pour down torrents of water.

Standing behind a plank railing, three young girls are looking at us, standing close together. Only the upper part of their naked body is visible. The three of them are resting their right forearm on the edge of the railing.

The last girl on the right is listlessly holding an oval leaf, about thirty centimeters long. The shiny surface of the leaf and the curves of its veins contrast with the matte aspect and vertical lines of the boards.

Behind the girls, on the far left of the picture, we can make out the front and entrance of a wooden shack. The three cousins are on the terrace of this shack, protected by a canopy of metal sheets or boards. In the doorway, the silhouette of a naked boy is facing us. On the far right of the picture, on the terrace, just behind the girl with the leaf, a dreamy-looking child is sitting next to a man whose face is not visible.

Let’s go back to the girls in the foreground… As they are holding the same position, have similar deep black hair with fringes reaching the middle of the forehead, they look almost identical at first glance, but on closer inspection, these Amazonian Three Graces differ in several ways.

From left to right:

Hahani, who is probably the youngest of the three, has hair that falls to her shoulders, and the lower part of her face is covered in dark paint. She is wearing a necklace of small pearls with two rows, and on the right wrist a darker bracelet of the same design. She is looking at us with a mischievous expression.

In the middle, Tiniru has a squarer face, shaved temples and hair that falls behind her ears to her shoulders. She also wears a necklace of fine black pearls and a similar bracelet. Her forehead is covered with a dark pigment, her gaze is direct and purposeful. Three bands of paint as thick as a finger run horizontally across her face: the first one across her cheekbones, the second between the nose and the upper lip, the lowest across her chin.

Finally, there is Ugunja, the one holding the leaf. She clutches her arms a little less tightly against her body. Her chest is visible. Her fringe runs across her forehead and ends at the back of her ears. The rest of her thinning hair falls down her back following the curve of her left shoulder. A thin lock of hair runs down to the top of her chest. Her slightly circled eyes express curiosity. She is older than her cousins. Vertical lines of paint run across her forehead, extending to her temples and cheeks.

Ugunja died a few months after this portrait. She ended her life by ingesting timbó, a plant poison used for hunting and fishing. This act would be considered suicide by Westerners, but not by the Suruwahá. In this community, the mortality rate is high, particularly among healthy young people between 14 and 28 years old. The mythology of the Suruwahá explains this phenomenon: it defines three spaces where the dead go. The most pleasant is the one where the young and healthy go, while the other two are much less attractive and are reserved for the deceased who have been bitten by a snake or who have died old age. Ugunja chose to join this paradise as a strong young woman.

A group portrait in the Amazonian Forest with more than thirty people spread out at the foot of a very large tree.

At the back, slightly above the group, are two teenagers: a girl on the left, and a boy on the right, holding a bow and arrow. They are perched on the tree’s roots, which are several meters high and spread out to the ground.

This is the family of Antônio and Francisca Piyãko, a couple of septuagenarians sitting in the foreground, in the center of the picture. There are 38 people in all: women, men, children and babies. Most of them are staring at the camera.

The number of members in this family is explained by the fact that Antônio and Francisca had seven children, and then raised seven more.

The tree behind them is a large kapok tree (kapok is a natural fiber that is used for quilts and stuffed animals). This giant tree can reach a height of 50 meters. The base of the one in this image is about 10 meters wide. The kapok tree is regarded as sacred by the Ashaninka and many other indigenous cultures.

The women are dressed in dark plain brown tunics, while the men wear striped clothes. Very young children are in the arms of their mothers, some of them asleep.

Antônio, like all the men of mature age in this picture, is wearing a straw headdress: a hat topped by a plate decorated with three feathers. The central feather is longer than the others. The headband is decorated with various geometric patterns. Antônio, the patriarch, has slanted eyes and high, round cheekbones. Like the other men, he is dressed in a tunic of handmade vertical striped cloth called kushma, made by the women of the tribe.

Laced around his neck, a light fabric makes a thin tie. Hanging from his right shoulder, a long, multi-stranded set of large pearls, like a huge necklace, curves down his chest to his left thigh. Long arrows and a large bow rest vertically against his left shoulder, blending in with the stripes on his clothing. He is wearing plastic sandals.

Sitting to his left, his wife Francisca is also wearing the same type of sandals. She is a brunette with long, loose hair. She stands out from the rest of the group because of her Western-style clothing: a light floral skirt and a paisley blouse. She wears a watch on her left wrist, the only sign of modernity in this picture, along with the plastic sandals.

Despite her tanned skin and her face marked by life in the open air, we can guess that Francisca is not of Indigenous origin. According to Sebastião Salgado, she is White and has never adopted the traditional Asháninka clothes.

Several members of the group have their faces dotted with fine geometric patterns. These motifs echo the ornaments on the hats, the stripes on the men’s tunics, against a backdrop of tangled vegetation dominated by the regal kapok tree.

Sebastião Salgado also notes the following: “When painting their faces with natural pigments, the Asháninka create exceptionally delicate motifs, almost abstract. They are an elegant community, where the extraordinary beauty of the women reflects centuries of resistance and hardship.”

We are flying over the tops of three peaks with steep slopes and exposed bare rock: three pyramidal-looking pinnacles, lined up one behind the other in a diagonal that starts at the bottom right-hand corner of the image and continues into the distance.

Changing from white to black, clouds overhang these peaks, rising to the top of the frame and hiding another peak from us.

On the left-hand side of the picture, at the foot of the slopes of these steep peaks, the vegetation spreads along gentle, sunny slopes. Just above the slopes, as if suspended, there is an isolated almost round white cloud.

Behind these peaks with their rocky ridges and uniform vegetation, four lines of ridges emerge one behind the other, getting higher and higher. They are shrouded in a fine mist that filters the Sun’s rays.

In the upper left corner of the photograph, the sky is darker. The lower right corner is also plunged into darkness, which closes the frame and highlights the isolated, cottony cloud in the center of the image.

The majestic effect of this landscape is due to the combination of the immensity and mineral purity of these high places with a misty and diffuse atmosphere, conveying a sense of a sacred scenery.

The Amerindian peoples who have lived in this region for thousands of years have developed sophisticated forms of adaptation to one of the harshest environments in the Amazon, without degrading it, by leveraging the various ecosystems and trading between communities. Small parts of the forest are felled to grow cassava in the dry areas, while thorny vegetation is exploited for fiber and straw. Areas of flooded forest yield fish and lianas.

Cassava, which is mainly cultivated by women, accounts for 80-95% of the local daily calorie consumption. The men hunt, fish, make basketry, and help with the clearing, transporting and harvesting of cassava. Illegal gold panning in the Indigenous Lands (which is legally reserved for the Amerindian populations) was practiced on a large scale in the 1980s, taking advantage of historically high prices, the abundance of gold-bearing alluvial deposits and passive local authorities. Gold panning is still part of the local landscape today, both because a number of Indigenous peoples practice it and because it is a regular seasonal activity for all the inhabitants of the region in need of quick money.

Similar to a floating island carried by powerful vegetation, the flat top of Mount Roraima seems to emerge from the clouds. This aerial shot was taken from a low angle, emphasizing the impressive elevation of the walls advancing towards us like the bow of a ship.

Let’s describe the photograph from top to bottom…

On either side of the thousand-meter-high cliff, white clouds spread out in a clear sky. On the rock, dark surfaces or vertical lines suggest the presence of crevices and show the effects of erosion. On the flanks, at regular intervals, bright vertical streaks mark the presence of waterfalls pouring out over the steep walls.

The middle of the image is taken up by a cloudy layer, which hugs the base of the mountain. Below, a strip of rainforest spreads out in a thick slope.

At the very bottom of the photo, still at a high altitude, but just above the lower edge of the frame, the beginnings of a new cloud formation seem poised to wash over the scenery.

The writer Arthur Conan Doyle was struck by the story of the first ascent of Mount Roraima in Victorian times. His adventure novel The Lost World, published in 1912, recounts an expedition that sets out to climb a tepui in search of prehistoric flora and fauna. Although this is not a lost world anymore, as it has become a sought-after hiking destination, this rainforest was declared a “fully protected area” in the 1970s, which prohibits all human activity other than scientific.

A portrait of a young woman of 15-20 years old, framed from the chest up, wearing a feathered headdress and vivid face paint.

The portrait was taken outdoors in daylight. Sebastião Salgado had Bela stand in front of a wall of dark gray rock, speckled with lighter patches. The headdress looks like a solar array of feathers surrounding Bela’s face and bare chest.

The young woman’s head takes up the upper central part of the image.

Her braided headdress, made of bamboo fibers, forms an arc that goes down on both sides of her face and reaches the bottom of the frame. It holds a row of long dark feathers with silvery reflections, conveying a sense of silky smoothness.

The area around Bela’s eyes, from the bottom of her cheekbones to the middle of her forehead, is covered with dark paint in the shape of a mask. The outline of this mask is made of sharp spikes of varying lengths, illustrating an explosion that highlights the young woman’s bewitching direct gaze.

Two shorter spikes run down each side of her nose. Bela’s lips are painted in deep black. Her hair comes down from behind her ears onto her chest.

The eerie symmetry of this portrait centered on the young woman’s luminous eyes makes her strikingly enigmatic.

Body paintings are widely practiced during the Mariri Festival where the Yawanawá sing and dance at nightfall, sometimes consuming ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic and sacred drug.

After having discarded the Bibles, recovered their rites, re-established the teaching of their original language, and encouraged the study of the old myths, the new Yawanawá generations have returned to the memory and knowledge of their ancestors. They once had a close relationship with the Inca Empire and have now fully recovered their traditions.

In the foreground a young woman, Josane, between twenty and thirty years old, brunette with short hair, is sitting in the forest. She is in the center of the image. Aldeni is sitting in profile to Josane’s right, in the background.

Two other women are with them, but we can only make out their silhouettes in the background.

Let’s get back to Josane. The frame shows the upper part of her body in a three-quarter position, her head turned towards us, almost entirely frontal. She has a triangular face, high cheekbones, a thin nose, full lips, and almond-shaped eyes that appear to be clear.

Her left arm is bent at a right angle, with her elbow resting on her left leg. Her wrist is adorned with three large bracelets of small, tightly packed beads: one black, one white and one that appears to be colored and where the beads are sewn in geometric patterns on a strip of fabric.

An armband of black and white frayed plant fibers surrounds her bicep. A dark line of natural pigment zigzags up her arm and continues down her left side. According to some anthropologists, this line symbolizes the mythological animals of the aquatic world.

Her bent right forearm stands vertically and places the hand close to her right cheek. The wrist is adorned by a large bracelet of small black and white pearls. Another white bracelet adorns her arm. She is also wearing a necklace with 11 strings of fine white pearls.

Two thin vegetal twigs stick out of each corner of her mouth. They flare out at the extremities, ending in small clusters of short black feathers. Another similar twig, about fifteen centimeters long but without feathers, runs through the wall of cartilage separating her nostrils. These twigs are a typical Yanomami ornament. They are made of palm wood and are about ten centimeters long.

Josane’s face is contoured by a closed painted line running just above the eyebrows, down to the temple and the middle of the cheek, connecting between the mouth and the chin.

What strikes us in this portrait are Josane’s eyes and expressionless face. She is not looking at the camera. She appears to be lost in her thoughts.

Just behind her, on the right side of the picture, is a tree trunk with speckled gray bark, long withered leaves hanging against it.

Josane partially masks Aldeni, sitting in profile in the background and slightly blurred. Aldeni is about twenty years old. She is also a brunette and wears her hair medium length, with a fringe down to her eyebrows. Traces of a painted pattern can be seen on her arm. Aldeni seems to be holding a pocket mirror in her left hand and looking at herself, her elbow resting on the bent knee of her left leg.

Further behind her, the blurred figure of a heavier woman stands. Her body is painted with two crossed lines that run from her shoulders down to her sternum and around her chest. The top of her head is cut out of the frame. She seems to be busy, perhaps attending to a seated woman that we do not see, hidden by Aldeni.

Another silhouette is visible in the background of the image on the right, half hidden by the tree trunk: that of a woman bent over, whose face is not visible, wearing a loincloth.

When Yanomami girls first have their periods, they are isolated in a small hut made of leaves and forbidden to eat any meat and to wash themselves. Only their mother or a relative can join them to feed them or light a fire. Women do not choose their spouses. Their father or brother picks their husband, with cousins often asserting themselves as the best option. Usually, the couple will take up residence in the village of the husband’s parents. An individual may be married to several sisters at the same time, and a woman may also have several husbands or lovers. According to an ethnologist, lovers of the same woman live in perfect harmony and without jealousy. A woman usually has between six and ten children in her lifetime, sometimes more. The Yanomami practice female infanticide and there is an average of eight women for every ten men.

The whole frame is full of vegetation: leaves, trunks, branches, foliage… But half of the complex arrangements of vegetation are actually reflections shimmering in the water that take up almost the whole lower half of the photograph.

In the river, the very slightly blurred image of the tangled foliage gives a faint sense of motion. The picture was taken from a boat, with no visible waves, eddies or wakes. The water is flat and quiet. Time is suspended. In the middle of the picture, the slender white trunks of a group of palm trees, with long, drooping, arching branches, stand out from the vegetation clutter like a bouquet. At their top, the palms form tufts that, from a distance, appear fluffy, like worn out feathers.

This is a group of Astrocaryum jauari, a species of palm with “pinnate” leaves, which literally means they are arranged like the barbs of a feather. These palm trees are endemic to the Amazonian Forest. They are found in large numbers throughout most of the region in seasonally flooded areas or along rivers and blackwater lakes. They have long black spines and can be up to 20 meters high and 30 cm in diameter. Their fruits are eaten by the fish.

On the left side of the image, the reflection of foliage in the water looks like butterfly wings. To the right of the group of palm trees, the curved trunk of a large tree is continued by curved branches, creating an arch. The reflection of this arch in the water forms an almost perfect oval. The intricacy of the mirrored vegetation invites us to search for hidden figures, as if interpreting the shapes of clouds.

Jaú National Park is an unspoiled paradise in the heart of the Amazon, home to many species of global concern such as the jaguar, the giant otter, the Amazon manatee, the black caiman, and the Arrau turtle, which has a long neck and a large carapace with smooth scales and can reach a length of 89 cm and a weight of 90 kg. This Park hosts about 60% of the fish species that live in the Rio Negro basin and 60% of the birds present in the Central Amazon. The area is considered exceptional for ornithological studies.

In the foreground, an indigenous man in his fifties is standing, bare-chested, framed from mid-thighs up. He is facing us but appears unaware of the camera. His face is in the center of the image. His mouth is open, his arms spread out, raised above his head, palms forward.

He has the characteristic stance of a man performing a spiritual invocation, addressing deities or other invisible forces.

He stands in the middle of a narrow mountainous river, with water rushing around large mossy rocks. On both sides of the picture, the banks are covered with an abundant vegetation and disappear in the mist.

The man wears two armbands of dark feathers from which hang two cords of about ten centimeters, and on his head, a crown of small white feathers of the same width. These are the typical ornaments of the Yanomami shamans, who make these crowns by coating their hair with beeswax and cover it with hundreds of down feathers.

Far behind him, in the center of the river, a young man is crouching on a rock, staring at the water, holding a bow and arrow. A strip of black paint covers his eyes.

Left of the central figure, a few meters behind him, another man, in his twenties, is sitting on a stone. He is shirtless with a white collar and has two black arm bands. He holds his bow and arrows vertically between his legs. He is wearing pants and rain boots. His face is painted black, except for a white rectangle around the eyes and nose. A black line runs down the bridge of his nose. He is watching the shaman.

This is the shaman Ângelo Barcelos—called Koparihewë in his tribe, which means “Chief of chanting” or “Voice of the nature.” Shamanism is a fundamental aspect of Yanomami culture. It is a way of knowledge that attempts to regulate the forces of nature and the balance of ecology. To achieve this, shamans interact with the world of spirits they call the Xapiri. The spirits permeate the entire forest: creatures, rocks, rivers, trees and mountains. Some of them are ill-intentioned and can attack humans, thwart their plans or cause disease.

In this picture, Sebastião Salgado captured the shaman Ângelo Barcelos invoking the Xapiri spirits to facilitate the ascent of Pico da Neblina. For the Yanomami, this is a sacred mountain that they call Yaripo. “Before climbing this mountain, notes the photographer, accompanied by 22 Indians and two of the greatest Yanomami shamans, all experienced mountaineers, one of whom asked the spirits for more clement weather. He was partially heard.”

The face of the shaman is contoured by a layer of dark pigment which covers his whole neck but not his ears, shaped like a large tongue which goes down his chest to the edge of his navel, with three clear vertical zigzag lines.

The shaman is wearing two long necklaces: one made with fine pearls with geometric patterns, another with a Catholic cross. Two tufts of feathers are hanging above his right shoulder and on his lower back. He is dressed in cotton pants or shorts held at the waist by a belt of fine beads.

Captured during his incantation, Ângelo Barcelos is looking to his right towards the distant sky.

Among other techniques, Yanomami shamans control spirits by inhaling a psychotropic powder called yakoana. During the visions provoked by the trance, they come into contact with spirits in their various forms: forest animals or ancestors who have become animals, spirits of leaves, lianas, honey, stones, rain… Some spirits come from the underground world while others hail from the sky and even beyond.

The shaman Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami leader that Sebastião Salgado knows well and has photographed many times, explains in an interview that “only those who know the Xapiri can see them because they are very small and shine like lights. There are many, many Xapiri, thousands of them, like stars. They are beautiful, decorated with parrot feathers and painted with urucum. Others have earrings and are painted black. They dance very well and sing…”

This is a portrait of Txitxopi, a man in his thirties, taken in front of a black background in Sebastião Salgado’s portable studio.

Photographed in profile, from the head to the waist, his bare-chested body is facing the right side of the image.

He is clutching a large spear that he holds vertically with both hands about 30 centimeters in front of him. The spear is much taller than him and almost reaches the top of the frame.

The long tapered tip of the weapon is made of wood. It is about sixty centimeters long and wrapped around the top of the shaft with a metal wire.

Txitxopi stands in the center of the image and is cut out on a very dark gray background that takes up 3/4 of the frame. His face is strong, with a wide nose and thin lips. His eyebrows are shaved. He looks resolute. In some places, his skin is a little darker, especially on his face, probably from traces of urucum, a pigment commonly used by the Korubo. On his shoulder, we notice very fine scars, like scratches.

Around his neck are two strings of fine white pearls.

He is wearing a large white headband. His ear lobe is pierced. His black hair emerges at the top of the headband: it is shaved in the middle from one ear to the other over a width of 5 or 6 centimeters.

As can be seen here, and unlike other communities in the Amazon, the Korubo wear few ornaments and don’t practice complex body painting.

The Korubo’s skin is often painted red, but it is the color of the clay that gave them their name. They are a people of the highlands, not used to rivers and to the mosquitoes that swarm on the banks. When they approach them, they cover themselves with clay to protect themselves from insect bites. Seeing them like this, their neighbors, the Matis, called them “Koru-bo”, people covered with mud. Until the first contact, they did not use the bow and arrow, so common among other indigenous peoples.

At least one Korubo tribe still lives in the depths of the forest, with no connection to the rest of the world. Even today, very few of them speak Portuguese, and they seldom communicate with other peoples. Their traditional culture is almost intact.

An aerial photo, taken at high altitude above the reliefs of the Imeri massif.

At first, it looks like the photo shows a volcano covered with vegetation with its crater spouting an enormous jet of smoke shaped like a mushroom. But on closer inspection, we notice this is not smoke: the top of the mushroom formation is a very large cloud pouring down an extraordinary amount of rain into the mountains. The clouds spread across the entire width of the image at the top of the frame. In the center of the photograph, the water falls as a steamy white column into the bowl-like formation.

The lower half of the photograph is taken up by the gentle slopes of the mountain covered with vegetation. Here and there, the canopy is illuminated by patches of direct sunlight that almost look like snow in the black and white contrast. The infinite shades of gray accentuate the difference in texture between the sky and the earth. The lighter velvety clouds and the misty blur of the downpour contrast with the dark and irregular texture of the mountain slopes. The distant aerial view blurs the details: the abundance of vegetation has an almost mineral texture.

In the distance, a mountainous chain bars the horizon. It is partly hidden by the downpour which takes up the center of the image. As is often the case with Sebastião Salgado’s photographs, we are awed by the majesty and grandeur of such a pristine natural landscape.

Whatever its form and intensity, rain is essential for animals, vegetation, river life and indigenous populations. Unfortunately, the dry season in the Amazon basin has increased by an average of four weeks in 40 years, perhaps as a result of climate change. Droughts have been occurring with increasing frequency and severity over the past 15 years. They can be more damaging than the region’s terrible thunderstorms, as much of southern Brazil and the Río de la Plata Basin depend on water brought in by clouds from the Amazon.

Crisscrossing palm branches about 3 meters long form a wall lining the entire background of the picture and cover the ground. There are eight women and two children, all naked. There is no visible ceiling nor opening in the wall of palms. It is unclear whether we are indoors or outdoors. The light seems natural and illuminates the scene evenly.

On the left side of the picture, four women are sitting down and coating themselves with urucum, a pigment made from crushed red seeds, which is used as a cosmetic but is also an antiseptic and a powerful mosquito repellent.

Two women are painting their own skin with their hands. The other two are sitting, one behind the other, facing us. The youngest one is spreading urucum on the back of her elder.

Behind them, two other women are standing and doing the same thing. They are leaning against the wall of palms in identical positions: the head and the bust a little bent on their right, right heel up, leg slightly bent to better coat the back of their thigh with pigment. Their similar bodies accentuate the impression of a synchronized motion.

To the right of the image, two women lie lazily on their backs in hammocks hung at an angle. They are facing the wall of palms.

Among the women coating themselves with urucum and the women resting, two children are on the ground near the center of the image: a little girl of five or seven years old, sitting in the background against the wall of palms, and in the foreground a child whose face is not visible, lying on their stomach, feet pointing towards us.

Aside from the two children, all the women have a large cone in their lower lip, about five centimeters in diameter and 10 centimeters long, pointing downwards. The clear shades of the cones stand out in the dark grays of the picture.

The women are also wearing beautiful white feathered headdresses which look like large tiaras. Dark cotton threads are laced around their ankles and the top of their shins. At least three of them wear a dozen bracelets, all of them on only one arm.

None of the women is paying attention to the photographer. This indifference makes us feel like we are witnessing an intimate beauty ritual steeped in an atmosphere of tropical languor.

The Zo’é are the only indigenous people in Brazil who use the poturu, a wooden cone in the lower lip. This huge labret represents their distinctive sign. At the beginning of puberty, during an initiation ceremony, girls and boys have their lips pierced with a needle made from a monkey’s tibia, then the poturu is inserted. Each day, it is replaced by a larger one, until it reaches the final size. This labret can have different diameters and lengths. It deforms the jaw while reinforcing the line of the chin.

The feathers of the female headdresses were plucked from the chests of king vultures. These birds are captured by Zo’é men and put on leashes like pets. Every time the hunters return from an expedition, they start by feeding the vultures to make sure they stay healthy and provide beautiful feathers.

The hammocks are made from fibers harvested in the forest or from Brazilian walnut trees. They are the tribe’s main items of furniture and are used in many situations, not only for sleeping, but also during the day, when taking meals, for example.

The Zo’é have no private property. When they die, their house, bows and arrows, tools, utensils, and all their belongings are collected and burned. They are excellent farmers. The cassava they grow is the basis of their food, supplemented by everything they get from the forest when picking fruits, hunting and fishing.

The Zo’é are convinced that a couple can only have three children. Therefore, to stay active and grow as a population, they are polygamous and polyandrous: men have several wives and women several husbands, where one may be a hunter, another a fisherman, another a farmer, another a homemaker…

They also solve conflicts in a very surprising way: when tensions run high, they settle their differences with tickling fights.

We are in a dimly lit maloca, the community house where the Marubo people live.

It’s a wide shot. The packed-earth floor is uneven. In the lower left corner, a black and white dog has its back to us. It is lying like a sphinx, its body facing the opposite corner of the image. It’s looking at 7 men sitting on two long parallel benches. Each bench is made of two tree trunks cut lengthwise and placed on two thick logs.

At the far end of the benches, a rectangular opening is flooded with bright light coming from outside. A child is facing the light right next to the opening. Above the benches and the dog, following the same diagonal direction, two electric wires are connected by a small light bulb.

The room is high and has no ceiling. The wooden frame of the roof appears bare under a dry vegetation cover. It takes up the whole upper part of the image. Behind the seated figures, a hollowed-out trunk, a little over a meter long, is suspended above the ground by thick vines.

It is a trocano, a sacred drum with a deep rectangular interior cavity which is used for celebrations and to alert the surrounding communities of important news.

Marubo community houses have two entrances, one to the South and one to the North. The North entrance is used routinely for the usual comings and goings of residents. The South entrance, pictured here, is the “main” entrance. It has two benches where visitors are welcomed, where leaders sit to discuss issues of public interest, and for evening conversation.

The men of the house sit there during the two daily meals, one taken before leaving for the day’s activities and the other on their return. The women eat in the center of the house, sitting on mats. It is also the place where ayahuasca is consumed during shamanic sessions.

Sitting on the two trunks of the right row, three men have their backs to us. Under the bench, there is the back of another dog. Behind the three men, on the right, a long strip of basketry hangs from a wooden post.

Sitting on the two trunks of the left row, four men are facing us. Behind them, a hen pecks at the packed earth of an open area, where a hammock is hung. The bottom of the maloca is made of vegetal partitions and lets some of the sunlight in. The scene feels quiet and hushed.

The Marubo divide society into 18 sections named after animals; marriages must be made with people from specific family sections, resulting in cross-cousin unions. The Marubo can be polygamous: on marrying, a man immediately becomes a candidate for union with his wife’s sisters; if he doesn’t want to, one of his own brothers can take his place. Each Marubo house has a “master,” who is the leader of the community and is also responsible for constructing and maintaining it. His family occupies the spaces closest to the main entrance, which also makes him a guardian of the house.

Portrait of Vanãeua, a Marubo woman in her forties.

Vanãeua is at the center of the photo, framed from the chest up. She is in a three-quarter profile, her body facing right, and her face and eyes turned towards the left. She appears cut out on a background of sky brushed with a few cloudy trails.

She has long, loose, black hair that falls down her back. A wavy lock of hair hugs the curve of her right shoulder. A fringe covers her forehead down to her eyebrows. She has clear eyes, wide cheekbones, and a strong nose with flared nostrils. Her expression is serious.

A string of white pearls runs in and out of each nostril, through her septum, under her cheekbones and up to her ears, where it disappears in her jet-black hair.

Vanãeua is bare-chested. Her shoulders are vigorous and her skin firm, a little speckled and grainy on the arms. She looks like she is sitting.

She is wearing four thick necklaces: two white and two black, all made of tiny pearls, strung in dozens of twisted rows. They are slung over the shoulders and cross each other forming loose black and white X shapes between her breasts.

Vanãeua has an arresting stare: her left eye is looking straight at us, while the right one seems lost in the distance. She is simultaneously present and absent, with us and already gone. This portrait of an Amazonian Madonna has a timeless sweet intensity tinged with a sense of deep sadness.