Dante Belluti, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, is a photographer and director of photography, shooting documentaries, feature films and television series. Since 2004 he’s been collecting portraits with his Rolleiflex.
On the border between Brazil and Peru, deep in the Amazon forest, live small tribes of isolated people. People who never had any contact with our civilization, something almost unbelievable in the 21st century. Although inhabiting one of the most isolated regions of the planet, these people have neighbors. On the Peruvian side they are farmers, loggers and drug traffickers who constantly encroach their land, pushing them into Brazilian grounds. On the Brazilian side their closest neighbors are the Ashaninka Indians, historically know for their bravery and independence. The only type of contact they ever had with isolated people always came in the form of sightings, swipes to their villages, and arrow strikes which sometimes cost lives on both sides.
The Ashaninka are estimated around 50,000 in Peru, while in Brazil there are no more than 1000 individuals. During the rubber boom around 80% of the Ashaninka population was killed, and many fled to the riverbanks of the southwestern region of the state of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon. The Ashaninka living in Brazil are trapped between our civilization and the protected territory of isolated people. The area is a constant conflict zone.
In December 2010 and January 2011 I went up the Envira river for over 600km, between the small city of Feijó, Acre, and the border of Peru. Although I did not see any isolated indian, I visited several Ashaninka villages, where I was received with great hospitality and extreme curiosity. I slept in their huts, drank from their ‘caiçumas’ and heard innumerous stories about the isolates, or the ‘angry ones’ - the way the Ashaninkas call their invisible neighbors. Their future doesn’t depend on them. Unfortunately it depends on us.
The images were taken with a Rolleiflex during the shoot of the documentary Parallel 10, directed by Sivio Da Rin. A film about Jose Carlos Meirelles, a veteran Funai official who has spent more than two decades protecting the territory of the isolated tribes, without ever contacting them in any form.