A Curvatura do Olhar is an attempt to synthesize ideas that were built from local learning with rubber tappers and riverside dwellers and their perceptions, in a direction contrary to the normal impulse of all photographic documentation. The benefit of editing and selecting photos 20 years after the documentation itself helped me realize that I let myself be carried by the light that came from the direct relationship with the communities inside the forest. This relationship became a priority and photography a consequence. The photographic apparatus and concepts and their historical relationships were important in this stage of visual synthesis for a flow of images and personal experiences. It is dramatic to realize today that everything that was lived as proposals for maintaining ecosystems was destroyed quickly and remains very close to the point of no return, which currently has the name of Climate Crisis. Never, 30 years ago has it been so current.
This photographic serie synthesizes the production and the way of life that had to be created within the forest and according to it, by a population originally from another region, mostly from the Brazilian northeast and that was displaced in epic contingents during a century of native rubber production. The place of residence, the collection of latex and Brazil nuts, the production of natural rubber, the effort to build a social, economic and political organization, which even had to produce a specific educational project and with the help of the legacy of the educator Paulo Freire. Click on the photos to enlarge and see the images from each gallery. Three galleries in total.
To consolidate the social and economic project of the rubber tappers, it was necessary to overcome a fundamental stage in the relationship with the merchants and middlemen who bought rubber: the rubber tapper had to have an education that allowed him to read and do basic math so as not to be cheated on the weight of the rubber and the values defined by the world rubber market. Chico Mendes and his companions put into practice the elaboration of the Seringueiro Project of education and health inside the forest and built several schools in the rubber plantations. The educational project was based on the principles of Paulo Freire and was supported by various entities that had been supporting the rubber tappers on several fronts. The health model was based on the health doctor and trained rubber tappers to act as health agents in the project’s own schools and in the use of the natural pharmacy that exists in the forest.
THE CLIMATE CRISIS BEING CONSTRUCTED
What we are seeing and feeling now all over the planet did not come suddenly, it was already being said, announced and shown by the whole scientific community. Não existe surpresa, mas existem responsabilidades. Pessoas foram assassinadas, despejadas de suas áreas de produção, jogadas ao destino incerto por não concordarem com este projeto de agressão violenta e irracional contra a natureza. Uma quantidade enorme de floresta foi derrubada, queimada acelerando uma perda enorme de biodiversidade. Quando estas imagens foram feitas, era assustador estar no local e parecia o fim do mundo. Hoje vemos que o fim do mundo tem outro aspecto e outra sensação. Não é o fim do mundo mas sim da relação do ser humano com a natureza. But the certainty remains that she, nature, awaits our awakening, because she will stay even if the human being does not stay on the planet.
THE BRAZIL NUT
Better known as the Brazil nut, it is a fruit of the so-called Amazonian winter, actually the rainy period from November to February. The chestnut is hidden inside a husk that falls from the Brazil nut tree, one of the largest trees in the Amazon, which can reach more than 20 meters in height. The rubber worker waits for the husks to fall in order to collect, break and remove the nuts. In the rubber economy, it is a product of the rubber off-season, since during the rainy season the rubber tree collects its latex and natural rubber cannot be produced.
