An insight into one of the most extraordinary places on earth, Amazônia highlights the rainforest’s degradation

The Amazon is home to a whopping 70 per cent of the world’s biodiversity, and accounts for half of the remaining tropical forests on the planet. But due to rapid development and economic activity in the area, its ecosystems are heavily under threat. With this in mind, the Carmignac Photojournalism Award, now in its tenth edition, decided to dedicate its accolade to the cause, recognising Tommaso Protti’s striking black and white photography.

His work recounts the damage inflicted on the region because of deforestation, illegal gold mines, drugs farming and more. In turn, the São Paulo-based photojournalist raises awareness on the Amazon’s degradation due to climate change and human activity while also offering some lighter moments, inviting the viewer to see what daily life is like in one of the most incredible places on earth.

Amazônia takes us through this extraordinary region which maps approximately five and a half million kilometre squares of land across Brazil, Colombia, Peru and other South American countries. The work is currently on show at London’s Saatchi gallery until 16 July 2021. For Tommaso, his interest in photography began with a degree in Political Science where research and deep study became a key part of his practice, something he incorporates into his photography today. His first photographic venture took him to southeast Turkey where he’d been researching the geopolitics of water in the Middle East for his degree thesis. There, he realised an attraction to the idea of being a witness, “to be in the field,” he tells us, “to meet and talk with people and to try and capture it all in my photos.”

The first time Tommaso went to the Amazon was for an assignment on the impact of the Belo Monte dam, a hydroelectric dam complex on the northern part of the Xingu River in the state of Pará, Brazil. “I had many cliches in my mind before leaving,” he explains, he imagined lush green lands and indigenous tribes, but upon arriving in the Amazon, “I quickly discovered that reality was very different, much more complicated and intriguing,” he says. Once there, Tommaso realised that the Amazon is not only a forest, but also a land of cities and people. After that trip, he felt a personal connection with the rainforest and decided to start work on the long term project that would become Amazônia.

Photographing the vastness of the region was one thing, but getting there in the first place was a whole other challenge. The latter was the biggest challenge for Tommaso while working on the series, and he recalls the time it took him ten days to visit an illegal gold mine, which he only photographed for one day. “The rest was travel and unexpected events,” he says. Journeying across the varying topographies and snapping up what he saw in his wake, Amazônia gradually came into fruition, “a mosaic made up of different pieces,” a wider collage of territories and experiences encompassed by the photographer’s hasty desire to show everything.

Amazônia sheds light on jungle cemeteries where stranded trees are used as tombstone crosses as well as abject killings at the hands of stolen land or stolen drugs. The photographer depicts these places in candid light, explaining his choice of monochrome photography as “the way I express myself better” as it “gives me freedom in the way I can approach the light and it has an evocative force.” In this way, the viewer gains an objective perspective on the scenes before our eyes. Images of the joyous and the distraught are framed by the same tones and colour choices, allowing the subject of the work to stand out afresh.

Tommaso talks us through a couple of images of notes. The first, a portrait of Paulo Paulino, a member of the indigenous Guajajara forest guard who was tragically killed by illegal loggers in an ambush on 1 November 2019. “I took it before a patrol and it was the only portrait I took during that week with the forest guards,” the photographer says. “Sadly it has become very important. I did not imagine that this boy could be killed.” Elsewhere he documents two drunk garimpeiros, or wildcat miners, in a bar in Crepurizão, a gold mining town in southwestern Pará state. It took Tommaso two days to get to the town, the bar being the first place he went when he touched down. Known as a base for miners to take small planes out to illegal gold mining sites in the region, the photographer finally goes on to say of the photograph, full of suspense and ambiguous emotion, “I learned more about gold diggers in a night in that bar in an illegal mine.”