Clump of jauari palm trees on the banks of the Jaú River. Jaú National Park, State of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019, by Sebastião Salgado

'Clump of jauari palm trees on the banks of the Jaú River. Jaú National Park, State of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019', by Sebastião Salgado, photograph.

This atmospheric photograph shows the rainforest in the Jaú National Park located in northwest Brazil. It focuses on the dense forest, seen across the dark and seemingly still waters of the Jaú River which mirror the scene, and create an almost abstract symmetry, like a Rorschach inkblot test.

It is part of a body of work Salgado made between 2013 and 2019 which documents the Amazon. In the late 1990s, Salgado who had lived in France, returned to his family’s cattle ranch on Brazil’s Atlantic coast. He and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, witnessed the devastation caused by deforestation and were impelled to launch an environmental and social project, Instituto Terra, to restore the land and native ecosystems, and train people in conservation. Following this, Salgado travelled across the Amazon region, reaching the remotest parts by boat and plane, to photograph the landscapes and twelve indigenous communities of the region. In an interview with Architectural Review (14 October 2021), Salgado explained his aims in photographing the Amazon and exhibiting his work: ‘Our photographs are about alive Amazônia, not dead Amazônia; it was not to have pictures of fires, of destruction. We photographed and documented most of the ecosystem in the hope that people understand what they come to see, to participate and to protect it.’