Decorated Traditions

One of the first photos I ever took was this portrait of a Kayapo warrior that I snapped with a borrowed, old Nikon Camera. I was in the Kayapo village of A'Ukre to attend a meeting of the chiefs in order to address the impending threat of the Belo Monte dam; a hydroelectric monstrosity that would displace many Indigenous and rural communities from their homes. A meeting such as this is a rare event as the Kayapo live in an area of the Amazon about the size of New York, consisting of 21 isolated tribes. For the most part, the tribes never converge in one village. It was fate that I happened to be walking by with my camera as this warrior stepped out of a house, framed by the dark interior.


The government of Brazil did construct the Belo Monte dam, making it the 3rd largest dam in the world, displacing many Kayapo from their ancestral lands, and bringing in outsiders, kubenire, who do not belong there.