Photo of the Month (June 2025 Edition): Amazonia in details

With each expedition, the small details of the forest draw me in more and more. The light that filters through the dense vegetation highlights the colors and textures of what lives hidden beneath the canopy of the largest and most vibrant tropical rainforest in the world. I already described the exuberance of the Amazonian niceties in May of last year, and the ideas I shared back then still hold true.

I’d just like to take this opportunity to mention that the photographic references cited in last year’s text were far from exhaustive. They were works I had physically on hand at the time and did not include, for example, the important body of work by Claudia Andujar. Since then, the elegant book Amazônia – Belezas da Floresta by André Dib has also been released. I’m aware of other projects in development, and I’m certain that most of the major works produced about the Amazon, especially by Amazonian artists, remain unknown to me now.

But the search for references has intensified recently, as the work focused on “Amazonian niceties” is taking shape as a longer photographic essay. In fact, this unexpected project has already been going on for over a year, and the hope is that it will become something larger next year. In the meantime, another unpublished photograph from the series appears in issue 319 of Outdoor Photography magazine, released today.

Finding compositions within the complexity of the vegetation and waters is no simple task. I had to relearn how to look at something immense through a magnifying glass—how to see each detail and understand how light changes with every movement the treetops make with the wind, or with every sudden cloud that covers the sun and surprises those deep in the forest, unable to see the sky. No beam of light illuminates the same spot in the same way twice. Each photo is unique—just as every expedition into the largest and most vibrant tropical rainforest in the world is.