A Photographer's Moving Chronicle of Amazon Deforestation

A member of the Guajajara forest guard in a moment of sad silence at the sight of a toppled tree cut down by suspected illegal loggers on the Araribóia indigenous reserve. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

A deforested area in the southern Maranhão State. The Amazon rainforest is losing the equivalent of a football pitch of forest cover every minute. Scientists say it’s reaching a tipping point: if deforestation continues upward, the forest may never recover. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

Drunken garimpeiros (wildcat miners) in a bar in the gold mining town of Crepurizão. The town serves as a base for miners to stay & to take small planes to a number of illegal goldmining sites in the region. The town’s entire economy revolves around illegal gold extraction. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

Kayapó children play behind a waterfall in the Kuben-Kran Ken village (southern Pará State). The Kayapó’s territory is the largest tropical protected area in the world, more than 3.2 million ha of forest containing many endangered species. It serves as a crucial barrier to deforestation. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

These trees died due to the opening of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Altamira, which flooded 400 km2 of forest. At the time of its construction, the dam was decried by environmentalists and civil society groups. It’s still mired in controversy. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

A drunk homeless man walks waist-deep in garbage-filled water at the port area of Manaus. Manaus grew from a quiet jungle outpost to a sprawling metropolis of 2 million people in the middle of the forest. Today it has some of the worst socioeconomic indicators in the country. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

Members of the Guajajara forest guard patrolling the Araribóia indigenous reserve in Maranhão State beat another indigenous man whom they suspect of collaborating with illegal loggers. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

A landless peasant leader on the Grotão de Mutum landless peasant camp near Canaã dos Carajás. Brazil’s Landless Worker’s Movement fights for agrarian reform across Brazil, where 40% of farmers operate less than 1.2% of farmable lands. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

A landless peasant erects a sign claiming occupation of the Santa Lúcia farm in Pau d’Arco. In 2017, the farm was the site of a bloody massacre in which ten land rights activists were killed by police. Today, the property is occupied by 197 families from the Poor Peasants League. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

Paulo Paulino (25), a.k.a Lobo Mau (“bad wolf”), was killed in an ambush by illegal loggers inside the Arariboia Indigenous Land. Indigenous activists who confront logging interests routinely suffer harassment, threats and even murder. © Tommaso Protti for Fondation Carmignac

Earlier this year, Italian photojournalist Tommaso Protti was awarded the prestigious 10th Carmignac Photojournalism Award. The award allowed him to document the deforestation of the Amazon, to bear witness to the environmental, humanitarian and social crisis resulting from this catastrophe in the region. His response was deeply personal: An eyewitness account of a subject that concerns us all in terms of the future of the planet we inhabit.

His project “Amazônia” will be exhibited, for the first time, at Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) in Paris. The show opens on December 4 and continues through February 16.

From January to July 2019, Protti, accompanied by British journalist Sam Cowie, travelled thousands of miles across the Brazilian Amazon to create this work. They portrayed life in modern day Brazilian Amazon, where social and humanitarian crises overlap with the ongoing destruction of the rainforest. We meet indigenous activists who fight to protect the forest for future generations, and witness the destruction caused by loggers, land grabbers and miners who exploit the region’s riches for their own profits.

Protti also takes us to Brazil’s urban metropolises, where warring drug gangs kill to get control over the cocaine trade, and where desperate Venezuelans fleeing the civil conflict in their country live in makeshift camps. We get to understand the huge damage inflicted on traditional river communities. And importantly, as Cowie puts it, his images show us “a glimpse at everyday life in one of the planet’s most extraordinary regions: people date, go to parties, worship and try to enjoy life, just like anywhere else.”

Protti says, “I wanted to illustrate the social transformations, focusing on the veiled truth of the bloodshed and destruction that are currently taking place in the region. These diverse forms of violence are the consequences of changes in the global market, as well as of the exponential increase of global consumption, from cocaine to beef. Scientists claim the forest is reaching a point of no return because of deforestation, fueled by illegal logging, and because of land grabbing, agricultural expansion, [and] state- and private sector-led development and resource extraction projects. I believe it is important to raise awareness of this situation and question it.”

A bilingual French-English catalogue “Amazônia, Life and Death in the Brazilian Rainforest” accompanying the exhibition was co-published by Reliefs Editions and the Fondation Carmignac.

Created in 2009, the annual Carmignac Photojournalism Award supports photographers by funding the production of an investigative photo reportage on human rights violations and geostrategic issues around the world. Selected by an international jury, the laureate receives a €50,000 grant and logistical support from Foundation Carmignac. Previous laureates include Kai Wiedenhöfer, Davide Monteleone, Newsha Tavakolian, Robin Hammond, Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen.

The show at Maison Euroéenne de la Photographie will also include work from three other artists: Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Harley Weir and Manon Lanjouére.

—Samantha Reinders

Tommaso Protti
“Amazônia”
Maison Européenne de la Photographie
Through February 16, 2020