Hungry Dogs
Lalo de Almeida
from Amazon Dystopia
Altamira, Para, Brazil 2013
Stray dogs stare hungrily at a butcher's window in Vila da Ressaca, an area previously mined for gold but now almost completely abandoned.
The Amazon rainforest is often referred to as the "lungs of the earth", absorbing tonnes of carbon dioxide and in turn producing some 20% of the earth's oxygen. It is also the most biodiverse region on the planet, home to some three million species of plants and animals. Three fifths of this priceless natural habitat lie within the borders of Brazil. Yet just as the threat of climate change is starting to be taken more seriously by world leaders, exploitation of natural resources in the Amazon continues unabated, with logging, mining and hydroelectric power generation the main drivers of environmental degradation. This process has been accelerated by the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing former army captain, who has little time for environmentalists and has expressed doubts about the incontrovertible evidence of global warming. Over the course of the Bolsonaro presidency, destruction of the Amazon rainforest has increased sharply as environmental policies have been dismantled, funding has been cut from enforcement agencies and environmental charities. While communities in the Amazon region are often the poorest in Brazil, little, if any, of the money generated by mining and logging ends up being reinvested locally.
Specification
Lalo de Almeida
Lalo de Almeida has covered news and social issues for publications in Europe, America and Brazil, working for the Folha de São Paulo for 27 years while pursuing his own documentary projects.
For his first long term project The Man and the Land Lalo met people from various traditional Brazilian populations, to understand and communicate how ancient traditions influence the communities relationship with the environment.
In 2012, Lalo won an award from the Brazilian National Arts Foundation to explore the social impacts of the construction of the Belo Monte hydro-electric power plant on the Xingu river in the Brazilian Amazon. This process led to a fascination with the fate and development of the Amazon basin, where Lalo has worked for the past decade, documenting the effects of industry and infrastructure projects on the fragile ecosystems of the rainforest and its people. This work culminated in the project Amazonian Dystopia for which he won a Eugene Smith Fund Grant in 2021.
Your Print
When will I receive my print?
We produce prints in a batch every two weeks. Shipping can take up to one week in the UK, and two to three weeks internationally. Orders should be received within 3-5 weeks depending on your location.
What will I receive?
Your print will be posted flat, in a protective sleeve, to avoid damage or curling in transit. Prints come with a Panos Prints provenance certificate with background information about the image and the photographer.
The paper is A4 sized, the image will be smaller than A4 with a white border around it - see Image Specification for exact image size. Borders will be laid out as demonstrated by the print images on the site. We do not provide framing services and images of framed prints are only meant to be illustrative.
Print Care
Paper and ink
We print on Hahnemuhle Baryta FB, an archival fibre based 350gsm fine art paper. It is a bright white paper with a traditional character finish and heavy weighting. This paper has long been the industry standard paper for digital printing.
What is a giclée print?
Giclée comes from French and literally means ‘squirt’, referring to the spray of very fine drops of ink that produce an inkjet print. We print with archival paper and pigment inks to the accepted standards of fine art giclee printing found within the collectors market. Prints should last over a hundred years and with care longer than this. Avoiding extremes of light, heat and humidity will help prolong the life of your print.