At the End of the River

Brazil is expanding and has already become one of the main actors of the economic scene worldwide. As the country wealth is rising - and with the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics coming soon - new infrastructures are needed to support the new Brazilian growth. The Belo Monte dam, on the Xingu River, is one of them. The dam, which will be the world's third largest and will flood an area of approximately 500 square kilometers, will have serious consequences on the environment and the communities living on the shores of the Xingu. Apart from affecting several indigenous territories, the dam will flood one third of the city of Altamira, which is already suffering from an increasing crime rate due to the massive immigration caused by the working opportunities offered by the dam. The tension on the Xingu is rising, as the Amazon people try to cope with the so-called progress and resist against the project. This project is about the people that will be affected by the dam. I wanted to document a world that is going to be erased and that is already experiencing the changes that the ‘development’ of a rising economy carries along with it. What is happening in Altamira is the struggle between two different conceptions of the world, where the progress collides with traditions. This is the portrait of a place that will never look like this again.