“This book is dedicated to all the indigenous peoples of Brazil's Amazon region. It celebrates the survival of their cultures, customs, and languages. It is also a tribute to their role as guardians of beauty, natural resources, and the biodiversity of the world's largest tropical rainforest, despite the incessant threats from the outside world. We are eternally grateful for allowing us to be part of their lives.”
The moving foreword by Sebastiao Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado, his partner in work and life as well as the editor of all the photographer's works including Amazonia, his latest masterpiece published by Taschen, is a wonderful declaration of love that began in the mid-1980s when Sebastiao Salgado first made contact with the Yanomami, one of Brazil's largest ethnic groups. “I had many questions before meeting them,” he says. “I thought it would be a challenging encounter. They were men, women, and families whose ancestors have inhabited these forests for millennia. They were so different from me, so far away. How would they relate to me, and how would I relate to them? Two hours after meeting them, I felt at home, connected with my community of Homo sapiens. I felt that they were us 10,000 years ago. What was essential to my urban life in Paris was also essential to an indigenous person living in isolation in the Amazon today. We are those same indigenous people 10,000 years ago. There aresame sense of community as I do, they practice solidarity like me. Discovering all these things has been a very profound, intense experience in my life.”
