7. Focus on stories of urgency and potency with a depth of feeling and vision
Inspirational and impactful images and visual storytelling require more than aesthetics and technical skill – they require a depth of vision. Having an environmental, cultural, artistic and spiritual vision will promote the recognition and respect for nature championed by many Indigenous Peoples in Abya Yala. Abya Yala is an Indigenous term referring here to Central America and areas of the South American continent.
I'm a visual storyteller and a futurist, so really thinking about making work that is useful now, but it's also very useful for future generations.”
Josué Rivas, Mexica/Otomi photographer, Co-Founder Indigenous Photograph, Mexico/USA
Images guide us, they convey us. Dreams are images, and here we live with images, they connect us, they harmonise us and make us rebels. We have to be rebels and support the struggle. Supporting and making visible the voice of our Amazon is a collective work.”
Yanda Montahuano, Filmmaker and Founder of Tawna, Sapara people, Ecuador
When I awoke I was no longer an animal but a human, that is how our story begins.”
Yanda Montahuano, Filmmaker and Founder of Tawna, Sapara people, Ecuador
In our culture, they prove to us with facts that I depend on the earth, on the forest. I feed myself, I shelter myself, I grow strong, I exist in it, as one more expression of biodiversity. So for us, culture is the projection of our perception of reality: we exist depending like a baby on its mother, on the biodiversity of the earth. And the forests exist because we perceive them as such.”
Mara Bi, photographer, Embera people, Panama
Image making and distribution should be guided by a powerful, emotional and meaningful vision of transformation, not just of a visual output.
Images without a depth of vision can fail to convey the feeling and emotion that the climate crisis has for many Indigenous Peoples. Instead, promote narratives that convey a genuine vision for ecological preservation, territorial reclamation, gender equality, intercultural health and linguistic sovereignty, as well as human and nature rights.
‘The Seeds of Resistance’ seeks to plant an idea in our society: that the Amazon Rainforest is not just trees and oxygen for us, but also the people that live there. To highlight the equal importance of the territory and those who live in the Territories, while also making visible the relations that people have with their territories, which is not like the relation people tend to have with land. The relation most people have is extractivist. Our vision of territory is economistic and it is totally influenced by economic factors, rather than socio-cultural, or by notions like ‘the Amazon is the lungs of the planet’, which is a very self-centred view."
Pablo Albarenga, documentary photographer and visual storyteller, Uruguay
In the Rainforest Defenders project, we started from the idea of showing how the youth in the Amazon are resisting, wanting to focus on stories from a positive point of view, from a point of view that, when another community in another part of the Amazon, in Latin America, sees that video, that story, they get excited.”
Pablo Albarenga, documentary photographer and visual storyteller, Uruguay
A photo is one thing and an image is another. A photograph being: that framed cut; the image being: let's say, the soul in the photograph. So when we say [a photograph is] "stealing our soul" it is in this sense as well. When the shaman is in another world ... for him it's as if he is seeing many images as if he were watching television. When there are rituals and we photograph this specific moment, we believe that it is an encounter between photographic and spiritual images.”
Edgar Kanaykõ, ethnophotographer & anthropologist, Xakriabá people, Brazil
People sometimes ask - what do you think makes a good photograph? There are these technical questions, of course, but there are more ethical questions, ethnic questions and these questions about relationships, all these things together.”
Edgar Kanaykõ, ethnophotographer & anthropologist, Xakriabá people, Brazil
All rivers give us energy, transport us, connect us with nature and we are the main actors in preserving and caring for it.”
Jessica Matute, photographer, Tsa'chila people, Ecuador
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It is the spiritual connection, you feel alive. The union of the earth and the woman is to make the roots of the earth grow in her core. Not feeling part of it affects health, spiritual wellbeing, your body is like something dead, lifeless.”
Jessica Matute, photographer, Tsa'chila people, Ecuador
Immersion in the culture of the Yanomami led Claudia Andujar to explore techniques such as double exposure, long exposures, the use of coloured filters or smearing of Vaseline on the lens, to produce a body of work more reflective of the experience of the Yanomami people. In particular their experience of spirits – xapiri – who are said to descend on the forest leaving trails of brilliant white light in their wake.
Report chapters related to this principle
Iconic forests: why do some forests receive more media attention than others?
What is a civilisational crisis?
The Amazon Tipping Point
Stories of urgency and potency
Indigenous self-presentation
Indigenous photography as ritual
Socially and environmentally engaged forest photography in Latin America
Conclusion
Download the full report
Download the full report
This report provides the foundation for this web-based resource. Commissioned by Climate Visuals and produced by Nicolas Salazar Sutil with picture research by Jaye Renold, it includes conversations with Indigenous leaders and photographers, media stakeholders and NGOs in 10 countries.
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