/Gente Rio

Here, in the north of Brazil, everything is river. It permeates people's lives with an intimacy that it is felt in every corner. In this project, I present a world that is redefined by its resistance to resign to its bond with water.
The struggles of those who fought to preserve their identity and heritage find peace on the banks of the river. Simultaneously, the private exploitation of the natural environment threatens the native communities forcing them to relocate in prefabricated homes in the city or pieces of land with poor resemblance to with what they know and are used to.
The unhealed wounds of Brazil’s European colonization blur on the banks of the river. In a country where the indigenous is once again injured by being politically instrumentalized, the river simplifies everything. The self-sufficiency of the communities configured around the river environments, together with the inability of the government to understand their needs, makes the different ribeirinho communities emerge as a political entity in itself with bonded by the shared intimacy of life returned to the River. And together in their bond with the river, they rise to reclaim their new identity.
This work is the result of almost two years living with indigenous, non-indigenous and quilombo communities of the northern region of Amazonian Brazil.