Amazônia Ocupada featuring the work of João Farkas (Video)

  • - Hello, everybody. I'm Hortensia Calvo.
  • I'm the Director of the Latin American Library.
  • And I am beyond happy to welcome all of you
  • to the library this evening.
  • I would like to thank especially Thomas Reese, who is the Executive Director
  • of the Stone Center for Latin American Studies
  • and who has partially supported this event.
  • And also, David Banush, the Dean of Libraries at Tulane,
  • who always supports the Latin American Library.
  • I also want to say a special hello to friends from the New Orleans community
  • who have come and braved the parking situation at Tulane.
  • So hopefully we’ll make your time worthwhile.
  • It's very hard to park on campus.
  • So, of course, our guests of honor. João and Fátima Farkas, Bem-vindo.
  • A very warm welcome to you,
  • once again, to New Orleans, and to the Latin American Library.
  • And just, I just have to say that I think with João and Fátima, something they...
  • they got the thing for New Orleans.
  • It's something that happens to you and it happens to a lot of us
  • who are from the parts of Latin America that are part of the African diaspora.
  • I know because I'm from Cartagena in Colombia, and it happened to me.
  • You come here and you just walk around and within minutes you feel an attraction.
  • You feel an affinity to New Orleans. You feel the poetry of New Orleans.
  • Not every place, believe me, has it. And I think it happened to the two of you.
  • So I know it happened to the two of you.
  • So I hope what this means is that we will collaborate
  • in many projects in the future and that you will come
  • many, many times to New Orleans and to Tulane.
  • It's such an honor to present the work of João Farkas,
  • one of Brazil's most renowned documentary photographers.
  • João was born, alas, in São Paulo. [Chuckles] I’m kidding.
  • He was born in São Paulo, but he's an adopted son of Bahia,
  • a place with a lot of poetry, much like New Orleans.
  • He graduated with a Licenciatura in Philosophy from the USP,
  • the University of São Paulo, and also studied at the
  • School of Visual Arts & the International Center of Photography in New York.
  • And over the years, he has worked for the principal magazines of Brazil,
  • such as Veja and Istoé, serving as photographic editor of Istoé.
  • In 1986, João won the Aberge award, as well as a grant
  • from the VICTA Foundation for the Amazônia Project,
  • of which this exhibit is a projection, a development of.
  • And since then, João has produced several major photographic series,
  • including projects that document life in the coastal city of Trancoso in Bahia,
  • the carnival masks of Maragojipe also in Bahia,
  • and the large tropical wetland of Pantanal, which are ongoing projects.
  • You can see photographs from some of these series
  • in the looping images shown on the large screen in the lobby
  • and as well as a documentary
  • featuring João and other photographers that was being shown here
  • but is now in the back on the other screen in the seminar room.
  • In 2015, João launched the exhibition and book Amazônia Ocupada,
  • which was exhibited first by the SESC in São Paulo
  • and curated by Paolo Herkenhoff, one of Brazil's most renowned curators.
  • Forty-one selections from this exhibit form
  • the basis of our exhibit here of Amazônia Ocupada.
  • The project documents Brazil's gold rush from the 1980s and 1990s
  • that brought so many prospectors to the Amazon River Basin,
  • a huge area which is about the size of the continental United States,
  • not all of it in Brazil, but it is huge.
  • And they went there to search for gold and to find their fortunes,
  • but unfortunately wreaking havoc with local populations,
  • local indigenous populations and with the natural environment.
  • And I am just thrilled that we have recently acquired
  • a total of 22 limited edition and signed photographs
  • from the Amazônia Ocupada series by João Farkas
  • to form a permanent part of our image archive
  • at the Latin American Library, which will be made available
  • to researchers, to students and for the classroom.
  • We have a very special program tonight.
  • We begin with a conversation with João led by Christopher Dunn,
  • a professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Africana studies here at Tulane.
  • Chris’s research focuses on cultural politics
  • during the period of the Brazilian dictatorship in the mid 20th century.
  • He also works on popular music, race relations and Black culture in Brazil.
  • He is the author of Brutality Garden:
  • Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture from 2001.
  • In 2016, he published Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation
  • in Authoritarian Brazil, both books published
  • by the University of North Carolina Press.
  • And with Charles Perrone, he is coeditor of Brazilian
  • Popular Music and Globalization from 2001.
  • And with Idelber Avelar, he's the coeditor of Brazilian Popular Music
  • and Citizenship from Duke University Press
  • Chris and João will discuss the making of the photographic series
  • Amazônia Ocupada, the exhibition, its historical context
  • and its relevance today and many, many, many other things.
  • But what we hope is that the conversation sparks questions
  • from the audience about Brazil, and so we can open the dialogue to everyone.
  • They will be speaking for about half an hour? 20 minutes?
  • - Maybe even less. I want to make sure that we have time.
  • - That everyone is included. In addition, then, to viewing João’s
  • extraordinary photographs displayed on our walls
  • all over the exhibit, I hope you've had time to to see some of it.
  • I also hope you have time to look at our exhibit cases --
  • there's one back there, and there are two in the lobby
  • and the four in here -- where we tried to weave a complementary story
  • to interact with the photographs that traces
  • some of the most notable Western conceptions of the Amazon
  • over the last 500 years through the rare books and maps
  • from the Latin American Library's Special Collections.
  • And in this way, we suggest a dialogue between João’s
  • complex vision of the 80s and 90s gold rush
  • and a broader historical context of varying and often destructive efforts
  • to appropriate and master the abundant wealth of the Amazon,
  • which is often called the lungs of the world.
  • And it is particularly important now
  • that we look at this age old story and that we are reminded
  • of these incursions and their destructiveness, especially now
  • when political events in Brazil are conspiring to
  • erode these long fought protections of the rainforest.
  • So to conclude, I have to say that this exhibition and this event
  • have been the product of truly joyful and sustained collaborations.
  • Over a year ago, Chris Dunn first came to me to propose this project
  • and his boundless enthusiasm, his passion for everything, including caipirinhas --
  • -- we have him to thank for that -- and his knowledge
  • had been the driving force from the beginning.
  • He and João Farkas curated the photographic portion of the exhibit
  • with probably a little meddling from Chris Hernández and from me.
  • The selection and description of materials
  • and the narrative that we wove in the exhibit cases were the result of a
  • really dynamic conversion of contributions
  • by Chris Dunn, by Christine Hernández, the Curator for Special Collections
  • at the Latin American Library, Rachel Stein, who is our
  • Research and Instruction Librarian at the Latin American Library and for me.
  • As we brainstormed and then we explored and unearthed some of the treasures
  • of the Latin American Library to try to weave the story,
  • I was, I have to say, I was surprised at some of the things we've found.
  • It is amazing. And then, of course, Felipe Cruz. I don't know where Felipe is.
  • - Right here. - He was hiding [laughter].
  • Felipe Cruz... Yeah, you were hiding.
  • He’s an Assistant Professor of History here at Tulane.
  • And he brought his -- he is another passionate Brazilian. Or Brazilianist.
  • You’re a Brazilian [chuckles]. He brought his passion
  • for technology to the mix in ways that will enhance our experience.
  • And given that we don't -- can you just say briefly what they can do to do this?
  • He developed an app for this exhibit that we're trying out today.
  • So it's a... So it’s just a little companion... Oh, sorry. So it's an app.
  • It’s a companion to the content of the exhibit and allows you to kind of
  • delve deeper into the work of João Farkas.
  • And it's an augmented reality app and if you don't know the term,
  • if compared to virtual reality, it’s just something that you look
  • at the actual reality around you and adds virtual elements.
  • So if you download it,
  • you can look at the photos and the map from the exhibit with your cell phone
  • and you get some extra buttons and virtual buttons and you click on
  • you can see videos of João speaking about the photos.
  • You can see some satellite imagery of the locations
  • where the photos were taken, as well as the curatorial information about them.
  • - So... - What's that?
  • - So it's CuratAR as in augmented reality - AR.
  • So curate, AR, CuratAR. CuratAR Farkas if you look.
  • Unfortunately it's not available for iPhones today [sighs].
  • - Yet. - Yet, yet.
  • They're a little more picky about this one.
  • - When is the virtual reality version going to be available?
  • [Laughter]. With the goggles?
  • - The virtual reality version released next year
  • will allow you to walk through the Amazonia experience for yourself.
  • So if you have an Android phone, you can download it.
  • If not, meet your friend. We have a tablet running around.
  • You can borrow my phone for a little bit if you want.
  • Just look around and you see little icons floating under the photos
  • and you can click on them and learn more about the work and see kind of a deeper
  • dive by João explaining the photos and the context and the characters. So that's it.
  • - Thank you so much for all that work. And the exhibit will be up until August.
  • Yes, [applause].
  • The exhibit will be up until August.
  • So by that time, maybe Apple has responded and people with iPhones can use it.
  • And we may have who knows, Felipe might invent something else by then.
  • So I also have to say that, hands down,
  • I work with the best group of people on the planet.
  • I work with the people at the Latin American Library.
  • And also besides Chris Hernández and Rachel Stein,
  • Verónica Sánchez, Madeline White, Carol Ávila, and Sarah Kittleson
  • were instrumental in getting this done. [Applause].
  • Without them, this doesn't happen, trust me.
  • And most especially to and grateful to João for allowing us
  • to serve as a repository of his work. For that honor.
  • and also for his generosity and laid-backness in allowing us to experiment
  • to understand, and to kind of improvise also, as we created the exhibit cases
  • to improvise on his vision of Amazônia. So thank you so much for that.
  • So please join me in welcoming João Farkas
  • and to the opening of the exhibit Amazônia Ocupada. [Applause].
  • - Thank you, Hortensia. I wanted to add my own words of gratitude and of welcome here
  • I want to start by thanking Hortensia, the Director of the Latin American Library
  • who has really just done amazing things with this space. I arrived here in 1996.
  • I've been here for a long time, and we had a wonderful director before, [inaudible].
  • But I have to say that Hortensia has just created this space into something
  • that is so welcoming and interactive and intellectually engaged.
  • Those of you who know me here on campus
  • know that I spend a lot of time here at the Latin American Library.
  • I have a carrel here. I love my department,
  • my home department in Spanish and Portuguese,
  • but I actually prefer to work here in my carrel and be here.
  • I spend a lot of time here and it's a very special place for me
  • personally and intellectually. And so it's a great pleasure
  • to be able to participate in this program here at the LAL.
  • A word about Hortensia.
  • We've been working very intensely on this project for the last year.
  • And she is, I can tell you, very energetic,
  • intellectually brilliant and also very detailed oriented.
  • We have a whole category that we used
  • as a shorthand, and it's called raffia questions,
  • and that comes from this little ribbon, this black ribbon of raffia.
  • This came out of a discussion that we had one day where she was just trying
  • to decide what color of ribbon and what color of raffia we should use.
  • And it was very important.
  • She said that these are the little details that are very important.
  • And then it became the raffia and the cachaça question
  • and what to do about that.
  • So these are all things that are very important to Hortensia
  • and I think that has contributed to making this a very, very special event.
  • I also want to thank all of the staff of LAL that worked
  • so passionately with us to put this event together.
  • Before going on, there's a couple of other...
  • a few other shout outs, I guess you could say, or welcomes,
  • special welcomes, because we have some visiting scholars
  • from other universities, two of whom will be participating
  • in an event tomorrow, Amazônia Ocupada Symposium.
  • And for those of you who have a program, please look at the back of the program
  • and you will see the schedule of events.
  • We start at 10 a.m. over in Jones Hall and the Center for Latin...
  • Stone Center for Latin American Studies.
  • And joining us tomorrow, in addition to four faculty members here at Tulane,
  • Kris Lane, Felipe Cruz, William Balee, and Sara Mellman, who's a Ph.D. student.
  • We have two visitors,
  • Seth Garfield,Professor of History, from the University of Texas,
  • I believe, is there and in the back, and Beth Conklin of Vanderbilt
  • University, an anthropologist from Vanderbilt University.
  • And I hasten to add that we have a selection
  • of books related to Amazônia here and their books are there.
  • So if you want to consult them, they're very important
  • scholars of Amazônia coming from two different
  • but related disciplinary perspectives, and we're so delighted to have them here.
  • So an additional lagniappe Brodwyn Fischer is here from the University of Chicago.
  • She's actually unfortunately not going to be able
  • to participate in the symposium, but gave a wonderful lecture last night
  • on her work on race and urbanity
  • and speciality, if you will, in the city of Recife.
  • And so welcome and I'm so glad you're able to join us tonight.
  • This is a very special night for me personally.
  • I have known João and then Fatima for over 30 years.
  • In fact, I was first friends with Fatima going way back.
  • And I'd have to say before I talk a little bit about João, that Fatima
  • -- sometimes I look at João and I think that's the world's most interesting man.
  • You know, the Dos Equis commercial with all the travel.
  • And I said, but Fatima is actually more interesting [Laughter].
  • And she has had quite a career herself.
  • When I met her, she was working in furniture design,
  • and then she got into music production and concert promotion
  • and then moved back to São Paulo and created all kinds of amazing
  • things for the house lamps and everything back into design.
  • Then became a yoga master and opened a yoga studio
  • then aromatherapy and now and I can't even keep up.
  • I'm only giving you half of it. And now she is creating her own line of jewelry
  • based on the cultural, religious symbols of Bahia and Salvador,
  • and she's wearing them right now. It's not meant as a commercial, but I did want to
  • also draw attention to this amazing person right here
  • Fatima Farkas, which is how I got to know João.
  • And over the years, we've had tremendous conversations.
  • A couple of years ago, he showed me this catalog.
  • And I'm wondering, in fact, if we can pass it around and you can see
  • more of the photos because we weren't able to use all of them.
  • And I said, João, we should do something at Tulane and that's how this all started.
  • But to start the conversation finally, I know that's a lot of prologue,
  • I did want to ask you, João, about the origin. How this all came to be.
  • Remember that this is -- these photos are from now
  • almost 30 years ago, more than 30 years ago, right.
  • And yet in an interesting kind of way so timely.
  • I was wondering if you could talk about the origin, how it came about this project
  • - Okay. I will avoid -- number one, excuse my English.
  • I am not a native speaker,
  • but I think it's better than speaking Portuguese [laughter].
  • So I was working after school, I went to work in photography and
  • I ended up being a photographer and an editor
  • at the weekly magazine like Time magazine
  • and so I worked there for four or five years.
  • Very good school, very good projects.
  • I came once to the Amazon forest and of course now Brazilian
  • photographers working in photojournalism were very attracted by the Amazon.
  • I'm sorry, people can’t see us. - Yeah you can stand up.
  • - But I think it's more friendly if we stand up.
  • I'm not that tall so excuse me. So the Amazon was very,
  • it was always an attraction for Brazilian photographers
  • because the Amazon is like more than half the country.
  • And in the eighties, until the eighties, it was very difficult to get to the Amazon
  • unless you lived in Manaus or in Belém or some other cities around
  • the it's very scarce populated and no roads and no airplanes to go.
  • So it was like living neighbor to a very interesting subject
  • and not being able to reach.
  • So I think that feeling it was in almost all of my colleagues.
  • And so one day I got a call from [inaudible]
  • which was a reporter from Istoe Magazine and very fond of the Amazon subjects.
  • And he tells me, look, there is all this gold rush in the Amazon.
  • So we knew and I was called by a prospector
  • that actually was the president of a union of prospectors, gold prospectors,
  • and he invited me to go to the Amazon with a photographer. I said, are you kidding?
  • Because these guys were having the worst media possible.
  • They were having like 100% negative media because they were destroying the Amazon,
  • they were killing the Indians, they were destroying the rivers and so on.
  • And how come they are inviting us?
  • Because we actually could not reach the garimpos
  • because mainly they were very far away in the middle of the jungle and you could
  • only reach them through a small airplane that would land on that area.
  • And the owner of the airstrip was the owner of the region.
  • So you would only get in if you were allowed
  • and they wouldn't allow anybody. So you could go to Serra Pelada,
  • which was a very huge mine, open mine with 60, 70,000 people there,
  • because there were rules going there because it was a region
  • explored by [inaudible] near Carajás.
  • But other than that, you couldn't go, you couldn't reach this place.
  • They wanted nobody to see. But this very smart man... [inaudible]
  • I don’t remember this completely. He thought he was very smart.
  • He said, we have a 100% negative media.
  • So if we bring someone here, maybe they have like 5% in favor of it.
  • Maybe they understand why we are here and who is here and exactly what we are doing.
  • He thought that maybe showing what they were doing
  • could get some more of real vision and not of frequency.
  • So we made an agreement with him.
  • Uh, the first agreement was, of course, they would not kill us,
  • which was...[laughter] even afterwards. And we didn't make any compromise.
  • We didn't say that we would publish anything. We do it. We're just going there
  • So they took us to maybe four or five different locations around.
  • Without their support was impossible to get there.
  • And with their support, it was very, very good. Very good. So we were amazed.
  • We spent ten days going forth and back in the Amazon, different places,
  • and I was absolutely amazed by what was going on there.
  • We met all these people from all over the country
  • and from different regions, from different backgrounds,
  • and this craziness going after gold and roads and
  • lenders and commercial and commercial mission
  • people and missionaries and Indians.
  • So I talked to Ricardo. We are not stopping here. Let's do the story.
  • And we didn't know that it would take us ten years and a lot of effort to come back
  • because the Amazon is very, very, very spread out and subject to...
  • So like sometimes from Rio Branco to Belém.
  • It’s easier to come back to São Paulo and then fly again to Belém
  • because there is no connect flight. And so we never knew beforehand
  • what we were trying to do and what we would achieve.
  • And I want to stop talking because I was talking so much.
  • - This is wonderful and I wanted to follow up because
  • first of all, it reminds me that this documentary in Portuguese,
  • it's called Olhar Amazonia or Seeing the Amazon
  • that features interviews with some of the major photographers
  • of the Amazon region, including João, but also includes an interview
  • with Ricardo Lessa, who’s a very prominent journalist in Brazil,
  • still to this day, in which he mentions that, you know,
  • they were invited up there, but he told them, he said, look, we're not
  • we're not going up there to do propaganda for you.
  • We're going to just go without any you know, and we're going to report
  • on what we see and sort of what João was was explaining.
  • But then the follow up question, and this is something
  • that I actually never really understood because Ricardo later on
  • actually published a book, a small little book that’s in one of our
  • cases out there, vitrines out there, and actually comes with a little photo
  • that shows João and Ricardo circa 1990 on the trans Amazonian highway.
  • And it's called Amazonia Raízes da Destruição, the roots of destruction.
  • But I'm curious about the journalistic reporting that Ricardo did
  • in any publications in popular magazines that would have had an influence
  • on how the Brazilian public regarded the garimpo.
  • I mean, was... did... I guess what I... did
  • your work there have an impact at that time or is it only later
  • in that you've been published, you know, in Amazônia Ocupada?
  • Was there journalistic publications
  • that intervened in the discussion around that at that time?
  • - Yes, there were several publications, different aspects.
  • Also, because the way we got there was selling
  • stories, partial stories to different magazines.
  • So [inaudible] São Paulo, [inaudible] Brazil,
  • even Goodyear, the rubber and tire company.
  • They had a beautiful magazine in Brazil and they hired us to go to Acre
  • to photograph to the rubber tappers. There are some of the pictures of them here.
  • So we did some specific.
  • So that's how we could reach these places, even General Motors
  • lent us a car, a truck so that we could do the Cuiabá-Santarém roads,
  • which is very funny because it's a road that was opened in the seventies.
  • So we got this car in Cuiabá in Mato Grosso,
  • and the plan was to go to Santarém So we got to Cuiabá.
  • We got this car from General Motors and we stopped in a
  • gas station and the guy asked, Where are you going?
  • We said, Oh, we are going to Santarém.
  • They looked at us like, how are you going to Santarém?
  • We said, Oh, we're going to take the road? He said, There is no road.
  • And we said, How come? It's in the map?
  • They said No, yes, it's on the map, but it's gone. [Laughter]. They built the road
  • They gave the land to settlers, to people from the south.
  • You can even see somewhere pictures from.. - Right there.
  • - people from the south of Brazil that came not to settle, of course, but to farm
  • These settlers were there and they never maintained the roads.
  • So like six years -- in a month -- in a year,
  • it was raining too much so we could not get out or get in.
  • So it was unbelievable. And we took this road.
  • We learned a lot. Like, for instance,
  • you're never the last in a group of trucks because if you are in the middle,
  • they cannot let you there because they cannot pass.
  • So you should be out -- never be the last.
  • And some other tricks that we learned. We always gave rides to people
  • because if something happened, they could help and so on.
  • But coming to your question, so we sold a lot of stories.
  • One or two of them were very strong
  • and they came out as a positive influence, like talking about the gold mining
  • and some ecological problems and questions of the Indians and so on.
  • But we cannot say that we changed the whole story because
  • already the country had a very strong impression
  • that something very bad was going on. The only thing people didn't realize
  • exactly and how, and especially for us, what was very interesting,
  • that's the main point of my work as you can see. It's the story of these people.
  • I even say that -- I was telling to your students yesterday,
  • these people were in the middle of nowhere with no cell phones,
  • with no signal for TV, with no newspaper, no nothing.
  • They had no news from their families, their friends had no news from them.
  • So every place we came, as you can see, people were very open
  • to have their pictures taken and to tell their stories.
  • They wanted to convey their stories.
  • They wanted to share the situation they're living.
  • And which was very interesting.
  • I also said that yesterday in the eighties,
  • there was not such ecological ideology. It was not very widespread.
  • And the question of conquering
  • the Amazon was always a problem, the main problem in Brazil.
  • We always felt that the Amazon wasn't really ours,
  • that it could be taken by somewhere else, by another country and so on.
  • If we didn't occupy the Amazon.
  • And that was the feeling that comes from the 16th century, it's
  • an urge for Brazil to occupy the Amazon in a way that the country doesn't lose it.
  • And we never knew and it was never very easy
  • because there wasn't much money to be done there.
  • So that's why the country never really took possession of them.
  • But this feeling was there and people were very, very proud
  • of being there, being a pioneer, of being...
  • This pioneer spirit was there. So these people were very proud
  • of what they were doing, even if they were cutting the trees.
  • Of course, nobody was proud of killing the Indians.
  • But even the gold miners, they were saying, we are pioneers.
  • We have conquered the Amazon.
  • So, we were very careful not to judge these people.
  • In general, we met very poor people coming from
  • very poor situation in their background,
  • especially from the Northeast and they were looking for a better life.
  • They were looking for making fortune
  • to give a house to their family or to feed themselves.
  • So in general, the situation of these people are so...
  • they were so in a suffering situation at the same time with very high spirits
  • of conquering, of taking their destiny in their hands.
  • So you can see most of the pictures here, very proud.
  • They display very strong feeling of We are doing something.
  • We are conquering. We are taking our destiny in our hands.
  • So this is something that is very present in the pictures.
  • - I wanted to -- you are talking about it looks like my microphone isn't working.
  • So let me just borrow yours. Some of the, some of the distances
  • in the maps and I just wanted to draw everybody's attention.
  • We actually have a map out here that shows all of the places where João did work.
  • And it's really impressive the the geographical geographical distribution.
  • There's also another map that I wanted to point out.
  • In one of the cases in the back, I think it's case number five
  • dedicated to a magazine called Realidade, which...
  • number seven. Thank you. Case number seven is in the back there,
  • which is a kind of it was kind of like Time Life.
  • It was noted for sort of new journalism, new investigative journalism.
  • It was active between 1966 and 1976. And in 1971, Realidade did
  • a big spread, a big feature on the Amazon Amazonia featuring
  • a lot of photographers, including some of the photographers
  • that we have in our other cases, but it also includes a map there.
  • And what's very interesting is that you can see that they've already
  • sort of determined the routes before they were actually built
  • and actually determines the areas where they're going to do specific types
  • of mining or specific types of agricultural activities.
  • And a lot of this, I think it should be noted, is coming very
  • specifically, very explicitly from a discourse
  • created by the military regime at that time that saw the Amazon,
  • they had this phrase that Amazon is a place without people
  • for people without no a land, without people, for people, without land,
  • which of course is totally a lie, which is totally false.
  • But it was this idea that Amazon was there for development, for enrichment.
  • One of the other things that we did with that case
  • was went through and looked at all of the advertisements
  • that were played into this narrative, and we kind of explained that there.
  • But I wanted to just ask you very briefly to talk about something,
  • and I want to I want to open it up to two other questions,
  • because I want everybody to to have a chance to participate.
  • But those of you who have the program, I'd like for you to open up
  • and I think it's on page three. I'm not going to be able to read it
  • because I don't have my glasses, but let me find them.
  • Can you just hold that for a sec.
  • Did I put them down? Yeah, here we are. Okay.
  • So if you can or if you don't have a program, look on with someone.
  • So I'm going to actually read the whole quote.
  • This is something that João wrote in the Amazônia Ocupada book,
  • and it was a quote that Hortensia and I would go back and forth, saying
  • What does this really mean?
  • And she would say, go call João and ask him what he means.
  • And I never got around to asking you. So I’m going to ask you right now.
  • And so here is what he said, “Someone once told me
  • following Sartre, Beauty won't save what it shows,
  • but my instincts told me the whole time that it was urgent and necessary
  • to go out and photograph, to photograph all that I could, to return and return
  • as often as possible, show others what my eyes had seen
  • to somehow create a warning, even if for history
  • to fight the terrifying sensation of irreversibility,
  • of silent and unpunished crimes,
  • and at the same time be capable of understanding motivations
  • and giving voice to the anonymous characters of that saga.”
  • I think that really encapsulates really very well the whole project.
  • But I wanted to go back to that phrase “Beauty won't save what it shows.”
  • And this is where we were like What does this mean?
  • What does this mean? So I'm wondering if you could tell us so.
  • - Well... - I finally got around to asking.
  • - Well, first I want to make a parenthesis.
  • There is a lady here that said that she came
  • and her mother is very fond of Sebastião Salgado’s work.
  • And I mention that because it's a good start to answer this question.
  • Uh, Sebastião Salgado is a very important photographer
  • and he happens to be from Brazil, happened to have a photograph to the
  • Serra Pelada mine and beautiful pictures.
  • And he’s being accused as every so successful person in general
  • has many people talking against him, especially in Brazil,
  • He’s being accused of making beautiful pictures out of suffering,
  • out of poor people, out of migrants or so on.
  • And it's a very important question for photographers.
  • And because we are dealing -- photography is...
  • even today I was bit of emotion
  • here when I was signing the pictures that will remain here.
  • I was putting the data, the day where the pictures
  • were taken that were taken like 32 years ago.
  • And I was getting emotional because it's a profession, it's what I do.
  • I do it every day and I did it as a living to sustain my family and so on.
  • It's also a passion. It's also maybe a form of art.
  • But what impresses me in photography, it's... I am an old timer.
  • I do appreciate much the fact that photography, it's a document.
  • It's been told very much against photography today.
  • People say photography, photographs lie. Photographs are fake.
  • Photographs can be manipulated and so on. So it's not a document, it's fake.
  • And of course you can say this about the language, the written language.
  • You can say that about anything. But for me, photography have both sides.
  • At the same time, it could be a form of expression and
  • to reach people from the sense, from the sense side.
  • But inevitably for me it's a document.
  • So how do you come and photograph the forest being blunt
  • without appropriating it from aesthetical point of view?
  • It's always there. It's always there. So these things go together.
  • So when you're doing a photograph, you could ask Sebastião Salgado,
  • please do a terrible picture about this terrible situation.
  • But I don't think it's the only way to look at it.
  • And I think it's no harm if you do a beautiful play
  • or a beautiful novel about a terrible situation.
  • I mean, you don't say that about [inaudible].
  • You don't say that about playwrights or...
  • they deal with very difficult situations and they do poetry. They do art.
  • But with photography, people somehow have this problem.
  • And so I showed these pictures to a curator, and she said,
  • Oh, this reminds me of this phrase of Sartre And he said,
  • “Beauty doesn't say what it shows.” So it's kind of an alert
  • that although we are doing our best to do some art or to
  • touch the emotion of people, still the things are going to happen.
  • Humankind is very strange and we have very good and very bad aspects.
  • And so we can do all this beautiful piece of work.
  • We can do this beautiful book, we can do this show
  • and things are still going on. So that's the thing.
  • - So at this point, I'd like to open it up for just a few questions.
  • And we have a lot of food here and more drinks.
  • And I know that people, I imagine, would be interested in that as well.
  • But if we can take some questions or comments
  • before we break up and return to the party.
  • Unfortunately, our mobile mic does not function.
  • So you can either come up here, or you can yell.
  • Annie, can you project?
  • - This is more of just a comment. What I'm thinking about is who [inaudible].
  • - Oh it does work. Okay.
  • - The Brazilian community of New Orleans is -- actually
  • one of the largest groups of Brazilians in New Orleans is actually from Rondônia.
  • And it’s as a result of the fact that after
  • the government sponsored the opening of the Santarem highway
  • and then when the World Bank put limitations on settlements
  • having to be careful about environmental degradation.
  • And then that the sons and daughters of those people that moved to Rondônia
  • couldn't make a living anymore. And so they started
  • this kind of undocumented train to the United States, New Orleans
  • became one of the places where people from Rondônia actually came.
  • And so in Chalmette, you have one of the largest communities
  • of people from Rondônia living in the United States.
  • - Wow. - I actually want to
  • just mention here that Annie Gibson is probably one of the leading
  • specialists of Brazilians in the United States and the leading
  • specialist as an academic of Brazilians in New Orleans.
  • She wrote a very fine book on this topic.
  • And I also want to thank you for bringing this up, because I also want
  • to give a shout out to all the Brazilians that have come out tonight.
  • So thank you for coming.
  • Muito Obrigado los Brasileiros que vieram esta noite. [Applause].
  • Do you want to respond or do you want to keep going? Okay.
  • She said, had a question. Go ahead. You can have the microphone.
  • If anybody wants to come up here, too, you can share the stage.
  • - I just I have to leave soon.
  • So I'm sorry that I'm standing here, but I have a question kind of concerning
  • politics right now and the situation in Brazil, the current situation
  • about the future changes that are going to happen with the Bolsonaro politics.
  • I just wanted to know how you feel about that, considering that you've seen
  • the beauty of Amazon and you've seen the destruction of Amazon.
  • I just wanted to understand your point of view because I've never been there.
  • - Well, I have to to make a disclosure first. I'm very bad in politics, very bad.
  • I have very good friends that are very good in politics.
  • So I listen to them because my vision for politics is very poor.
  • I trust people. I believe everything will be okay.
  • I'm an optimist and I believe in beauty and I believe in the human kind.
  • So I am very bad in politics. I am mistaken most of the time.
  • And so what we do hope is that this new government
  • is very incompetent for these questions.
  • So we hope that they don't do what they planned because they don't feel very good.
  • But I cannot say what the they were going to do.
  • But we hope that they are very incompetent.
  • - Yes. Yes.
  • - Have you returned back after so many years?
  • And what you saw that made you think back about things
  • that have changed, the people that are left and
  • after so many years, what's left there?
  • - It's an interesting question. I went back in 2011
  • with a friend who is also in the documentary, Eduardo Simões.
  • He did a huge project in the Amazon, like one of his trips I did with him.
  • Well, one main change is that the gold mining,
  • it's much more professional these days.
  • You have more machinery, they are bigger, they are more structured.
  • It's not so much of the lonely prospector anymore. So this is a huge change.
  • Other than that, it's pretty much the same. I mean, it's...
  • If you fly over the Amazon, you can in many, many areas,
  • you can feel that it's endless, that it will never be destroyed,
  • humankind will never be able to destroy this.
  • It’s so huge. It’s so immense. The size of the rivers, the distances.
  • You think it's amazing. But somehow you think we can’t destroy it.
  • The only problem is when you see
  • the satellite photos, then you see that it's coming.
  • It's coming. Layer by layer.
  • It's coming from the south, from Rondônia and from the main roads.
  • It's somehow it's hurting and it's bleeding.
  • But still, when you when you go there, you're still amazed by the size.
  • It's immense. It's immense. And I think somehow that feeling
  • it's part of the reason why we are destroying the Amazon
  • because it feels so immense. It feels so long, so far away, so undestroyable.
  • Is that the word? It’s indestructible, that somehow
  • you have this feeling, Oh, I do just a little bit harm here.
  • It won't hurt, you know. So I think somehow this is
  • in the background of Brazilians that we can use it, we can do it there.
  • And so but the whole thing, it's almost the same.
  • You don't see more of... You see much less of the religious people.
  • There is much resistance for that.
  • You see much less of non contact indigenous people
  • and you see more of the medium sized cities and you see some more roads.
  • But other than that, it's pretty much the same.
  • You know, people opening small farms and so on.
  • - And if you get a chance,
  • if you get a chance to use the tablet and the program that Felipe used, there
  • are, if you click the map icon, there are satellite photos of what
  • that area that the photo was taken in looks like now.
  • And you can see all the destruction and kind of the miss, the gaps in the forest.
  • - Okay so question for you. The first is since your work displayed
  • more of the humanity of the garimpeiros, did you feel it was criticized for showing
  • a different image than what mainstream media was showing at the time?
  • And the second is, did you get a chance to interact with indigenous people?
  • - Good question about the garimpeiros. Well, uh, number one.
  • I didn't publish this work at that time, and I didn't do a large exhibition.
  • So these pictures were seen much more now than at the time.
  • Uh, but what I feel is that two things. On one hand,
  • people don't really look at things the way we think.
  • People already have something in their minds.
  • So when they look at something, they see what they want.
  • It's strange. So if people didn't like garimpeiros,
  • they wouldn’t think the pictures are great because they show
  • enemy of nature and full body and so on. And if people had more of a human vision,
  • they would see that on the pictures. I think somehow it’s the way I work.
  • I don't like much this idea of artists. And so I think we give too much importance
  • to art and artists everything that became so much of...
  • And I think everybody has an arts... feeling it in his heart
  • and eventually everybody can be, can do arts in some way.
  • I don't really do a big thing about it. And
  • as a photojournalist that I was for many, many years, now
  • my work is literally changing more into self-expression. But,
  • uh, I always consider myself
  • an instrument of these people that want their pictures taken.
  • I always feel that I am at service of nature, of history, of these people.
  • So I think Hortensia had this experience with us the other day.
  • I was, we were visiting a place and she was amazed by the fact that I took
  • a picture of a man in the airport. [Inaudible]. Do you want to....
  • - No, you say. - No, please.
  • - Okay.
  • - Because she explained so well the way I work.
  • - Well, I was amazed because we went to Lakefront Airport.
  • If you've never been there, you have to go there.
  • It's an art deco jewel and it still works.
  • And it's half empty and only in New Orleans, it's pristine.
  • It was fairly recently restored, I think. And so anyway, we entered.
  • The facade is beautiful and João took
  • pictures and things and there was a chef walking
  • in this empty kind of entry hallway and they immediately connected.
  • He was such a quintessential New Orleans figure, very welcoming, a tall black man
  • who just spoke beautifully, very articulate, very friendly,
  • welcoming us to place, very proud that he was the chef of this place.
  • And he immediately connected with João,
  • and they began this kind of connection and kept talking. You kept photographing him.
  • He allowed him to photograph him without a question
  • as to what he was doing with the photographs.
  • For all he knew, this would be plastered all over the internet.
  • He just didn't know but you two established a very intimate connection.
  • - Thank you. It's like I wanted her to tel it because she describes so well.
  • It's more like I made him feel that he was also helping me to take his picture.
  • That was, he was also doing the picture.
  • So I was trained in New York City and I was young student there.
  • I was taking pictures in the street
  • and New York is not the easiest place to photograph.
  • So I had to develop a way of intuition about
  • who is open to be photographed and how to deal with unknown people.
  • So I've been training this all my life and I do a lot of meditation
  • and so I tried to clean my mind and to be able to to understand people and
  • let them use my capacity as a photographer to help them have their pictures taken.
  • So actually, I don't consider my work mine.
  • Many times I've been asked to publish the series of the kind of old masks.
  • And so and this again, can be used
  • as a reminder or a small thing or as a token, etc..
  • I said, Yes, go ahead. These pictures are not mine.
  • Of course, if somebody wants to buy my pictures, I sell because
  • I make a living out of that, which is quite surprising
  • because when I started, you wouldn't make a living out of selling pictures.
  • But so and all that to answer the lady. But anyway, that's the way I work.
  • And I think if you are really open your ears, really open to people... truth comes
  • And even our friend Lydia Schwartz, in the video she talks about this.
  • It's very easy to to point a villain or to make a hero.
  • It's very difficult to work in between because
  • everybody has some of both.
  • So this young boy burning the forest, he's like 11 year old boy.
  • And probably his father asked him to burn the part of the forest.
  • They are putting down to plant something to meet.
  • So I was interviewing Brazilian television.
  • They came to me and asked, Oh, please tell us who is destroying the Amazon.
  • As if I could point at these people and say.
  • And I got fed up of that and I said, we are destroying the Amazon,
  • the Brazilians, the humankind because we keep buying the wood.
  • We keep eating hamburgers, so we need more cattle to raise
  • and we need more soybean and we are endless.
  • We will destroy everything. We should care if we can.
  • So I think this work has this characteristic
  • of not judging people, but trying to contain their stories.
  • - I know that there was just one more question
  • about the indigenous question, and then we're going to have to wrap it up.
  • She was asking you if you did any work with indigenous.
  • - Oh, yes, I did connect with some Indigenous people,
  • but I never lived with them. I was only telling some of the stories.
  • We had this very strong story about the Yanomami Indian
  • that was shot the very first time he saw a white man.
  • He was in a tree and the garimpeiros came by...
  • and yes, it's right there. And it was -- it's a small story
  • that tells the whole story of the Yanomami Indians.
  • It's in the movie in the documentary.
  • I also came to the [inaudible] Indians in Rondonia, and they had reacted.
  • They had killed the gold miners. They were very proud of this.
  • So we went there and I stayed a few days there and I took some pictures.
  • I also talk about that. And so
  • somehow I got some examples of the situation of the Indians,
  • but I never really belonged or stayed longer.
  • And I don't speak and I'm not a specialist.
  • - All right.
  • Well, I think that we could, I'm sure, go on for a lot longer.
  • We have a whole table of food and we have more drinks.
  • And I want to also have an opportunity for people to come up and, you know,
  • have private conversations or more individualized conversations with João.
  • But I also want to thank everybody for coming out today.
  • It was a wonderful group of people. So thank you again and thank you João.
  • Of course, it was my honor and privilege to be here
  • to have my pictures in the collection.
  • And I really want to thank you because he worked a whole year on this exhibition.
  • He is a hero. [Applause].
  • Thank you and remember the exhibit is going to be up through August.
  • So you have plenty of time. Take a look at the glass cases.
  • There's a lot of great information there.