Lelia Salgado

Sebastiao Salgado traveled the Brazilian Amazon and photographed the unparalleled beauty of this extraordinary region for six years: the forest, the rivers, the mountains, the people who live there-an irreplaceable treasure of humanity. In the book's foreword Salgado writes: "For me, it is the last frontier, a mysterious universe of its own, where the immense power of nature can be felt as nowhere else on earth. Here is a forest stretching to infinity that contains one-tenth of all living plant and animal species, the world's largest single natural laboratory." Salgado visited a dozen indigenous tribes that exist in small communities scattered across the largest tropical rainforest in the world. He documented the daily life of the Yanomami, the Ashaninka, the Yawanawa, the Suruwaha, the Zo'e, the Kuikuro, the Waura, the Kamayura, the Korubo, the Marubo, the Awa, and the Macuxi-their warm family bonds, their hunting and fishing, the manner in which they prepare and share meals, their marvelous talent for painting their faces and bodies, the significance of their shamans, and their dances and rituals.