Photo reference: Paul Koop

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Tropical Arcadia – the New People


I constantly find myself thinking about the work of Gilberto Freyre – automatically reflecting on something which already took on a life of its own a few years ago.

It was the people who presented themselves to me and my camera far away in my home country. Quite alone with themselves and their uniqueness, with their instincts... the animal, the primeval being that lives within us, the link that connects us. They stood there before me in their mysticism, occupying the empty hell of my heart and adorning the bare walls of my memory with their images. In their poses, framed by contemporary problems, between rural landscapes, where the rivers occasionally look like the ocean and burnt forests where once the exoticism of exuberant nature was still intact. Before we robbed the forests of their trees and killed their fascinating creatures.

Nonato & Concita ( pdf: 600 kB )

A place where the original inhabitants of Brazil – the Indian people – once lived, free of all civilisation processes, protected from our greed and ignorance. Since Brazil came into existence, they have lived as fugitives. They must forget their faith, their culture, their language in order to survive in an asylum, in their own country. Exploitation is ubiquitous and has somehow become a matter of course, as I personally established to my regret when visiting an Indian tribe, the Guajajaras, from the north-east. A tribe that I chose for my photo project as "representatives" of the indigenous Brazilians.

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