INFECTED
by climate disasters
Polluted smoke from climate catastrophe shrouds Brazil
Last Monday and in the days that followed, São Paulo, Brazil experienced the worst air quality of any major city in the world. The effects of September's drought, heat wave and wildfires are increasingly visible across Brazil. Devastating flames are ravaging large areas of the Amazon rainforest and critical parts of the Pantanal wetlands, both of which are essential for biodiversity conservation. A massive plume of smoke has engulfed the country, shrouding cities in a gray haze and forcing residents to contend with dangerously poor air quality.
Recent reports show that the amount of indigenous forest burned in the Amazon increased by 132 percent in August 2024 compared to August 2023, with many of these fires attributed to human activity.
Environmentalists warn that the surge in forest fires is primarily due to ongoing droughts and heat waves exacerbated by climate change. This alarming combination of human impact and climatic factors poses a significant threat to the rainforest. In response, the Brazilian government has vowed to increase enforcement and resources to combat the fires. At the same time, international organizations are calling for increased efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest, underscoring the critical importance of preserving this vital ecosystem in the fight against climate change.
Unfortunately, breathing polluted air is expected to become commonplace in Brazil in the coming months, as record-high temperatures are predicted to increase the frequency of these destructive fires.
For years, many Brazilians have ignored warnings from environmentalists that the country was approaching a long-awaited ‘point of no return’.
That tipping point may have arrived.
Sources: The Brazilian Report, G1Globo.com, NASA
fOCUS Amazônia
Ao combate
Into combat
Manaus, Amazonas
Fotos: Raphael Alves
Now available: photobook ‘Riversick’ from photographer Raphael Alves
‘Riversick’ by Raphael Alves is a photographic essay that shows how people and nature share space in and around Manaus. Before that, it's a reverie on the relationship between author and place: it's about how the author relates to the different possible (and impossible) Manaus, not the one he inhabits, but the one that lives in him.
The title of the series is a play on words. The idea of homesickness, ‘homesick’, the seasickness caused by the sea, ‘seasick’, and ‘river’, due to the geographical location of Manaus, on the banks of two of the largest rivers in the world: Solimões and Negro.
Pre-sale shipping is free and the photo book costs R$72 (72 Brazilian Real); after the pre-sale, shipping is a flat rate of R$15 and the photo book costs R$83 (83 Brazilian Real).
Get yours through this link: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/MUQCHBE5P8ZRY
The photobooks will be shipped in the second half of September.
Or you can pick up your photobook in person during the Photothings Festival on September 14th and 15th at the Monte Azul Cultural Center - Avenida Tomás de Sousa nº552. Jardim Monte Azul, São Paulo - SP. From 2 pm to 7 pm.
BRAZILIAN FEVERS
The low sun at the end of the day gives the deserted port area an atmosphere of desolation. A no man's land where time seems to stand still and nothing matters anymore, depression and melancholy form a protective cloak.
Weeds grow over and between rusty rails, empty beer cans and the occasional liquor bottle. Motionless, towering cranes look on like petrified giants. As Matt Johnson and photographer Wim van de Hulst disappear into the distance between the empty train cars, a police car approaches. Curious glances at the lone car, a moment's hesitation ... and all that remains is a cloud of exhaust, leaden again in the silence. In the distance, a plane takes off.
It was the fall of 1986 when Wim van de Hulst photographed Matt Johnson in grainy black and white in a deserted Amsterdam train yard for the Dutch music magazine OOR. The 24-year-old Johnson, known as a rock artist under the curious pseudonym The The, had just released his new album: Infected. The album was accompanied by a book of lyrics, photographs and illustrations, and a film shot on location in Peru, Bolivia, New York and London. On Infected, Johnson outlines the decline and decay of the human species, its aggressions and obsessions. Infected grabbed me, especially the title track with its feverish images of the Amazon River.
It was not the first time that Wim van de Hulst and I worked together, he as a photographer, I as a pop journalist. It started in 1984 with a story for OOR about Edward Ka-Spel and his neo-psychedelic band The Legendary Pink Dots. Ten years later, we were on the road as a duo for OOR for the last time, in Belgium, in a colorful world of colors and cultures, together with the five cheerful a cappella singing women of Zap Mama.
In those ten years we produced a stream of reports and stories, mostly for OOR, but also for Nieuwe Revu, HP/De Tijd and the VPRO. Most of these stories took place in the darker corners of not only rock culture, but also the world of art, film and theater.
In words and pictures we told about Sonic Youth, Swans, Front 242, Laibach, The The, Diamanda Galas, Nick Cave, Marc Almond, Lydia Lunch and last but not least Jim Thirlwell, the man who nailed himself to the rock cross as Foetus.
In 1990 I went to Brazil for the first time. I survived aggressive bees in the Amazon jungle, drunken natives, the anti-malaria drug Lariam and the river itself, had a feverish delirium in the wetlands of Ilha de Marajó, was picked up in the bush by a single-engine plane and flown to the hospital, and danced with the drummers of Olodum in Salvador, Bahia. Brazil turned out to be pretty rock & roll and I was clearly infected.
In May 1994 I swapped OOR and pop journalism for the jungle of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Without a photographer. I had to do it myself, he said. I could do it.
A few years later, Wim van de Hulst and his partner, designer Marion Rosendahl, helped me put together my first solo photo exhibition in the gallery of the famous pop venue De Melkweg in Amsterdam.
