Riverine Chronicles

Riverine Chronicles is a visual and textual interpretation of stories shared with me by people who live along the Uatumã River in the Amazon rainforest. Reminiscences, portraits, and images form chronicles of the lives on the riverbanks.

The riverine populations of the Amazon have been shaped by several waves of migration to northern Brazil in search of work. These movements run throughout the country's history, from the first rubber boom at the end of the 19th century to the end of the military dictatorship and its projects to occupy the forest.

A population encouraged to leave their homeland by extractive and expansionist policies spread throughout the Amazon. Many of these people remained in territories linked to these work, settlement, and forest exploitation projects, creating their own ways of adapting to the environment.

For three years, I worked as a photography and video teacher with young people from the communities of the Uatumã River. During this period, I built relationships with the people who lived there, and little by little, I gathered the stories I heard from the locals and noticed recurring patterns in the themes and the way they narrated events of their present and past.

Stories that spoke of the time of the rivers. Accounts passed down orally, almost always as simple portraits of daily life, with a magical tone. A seemingly small tale, which, in its unpretentiousness, revealed cultural identities formed by the coexistence with the river and the forest.

In these stories, the everyday merges with the enchanted and with the marks of history. Indigenous and Northeastern traditions meet on the banks of the river, speaking of magical beings that inhabit the forest. Ecological tragedies, such as the Balbina Hydroelectric Plant, built in the heart of the jungle during the dictatorship, altered the water and the land. The river appears as both sustenance and threat—abundant, but also harsh and relentless, capable of giving and taking life.

I created triptychs, combining the text I wrote from the stories I heard; a photograph related to the account; and a portrait of the person who shared the tale with me—always with the camera close up—illuminated by a handheld flash. From the combination of these elements, a chronicle was born. A format that seemed close to the riverside way of narrating their Amazonian experiences.

"Riverside Chronicles" is a visual and textual interpretation of stories shared with me by people who live along the Uatumã River in the Amazon rainforest. The project brings together anecdotes, portraits, and images to form short chronicles of life on the riverbank—individual stories that carry something of a collective experience.