Ahead of a major exhibition in London documenting the South American wetland as it faces unprecedented threat, Lalo de Almeida recounts the stories behind his award-winning images
L
alo de Almeida is a documentary photographer based in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2021 his photo essay Pantanal Ablaze was awarded first place in the environment stories category at the World Press Photo contest. In 2022, he won the Eugene Smith grant in humanistic photography and World Press Photo’s long-term project award for his work Amazonian Dystopia, which documents the exploitation of the world’s largest tropical forest.
I have been photographing socio-environmental issues for more than 30 years, especially in the Amazon. 2020 was no different. News of the uncontrolled fires devastating the Pantanal began to catch my attention. So, together with a fellow journalist, I decided to go and see what was happening for myself.
It was a shock when we arrived in the region. The fire was out of control and there was almost no firefighting. I had seen many fires in the Amazon, but nothing compared to this. The saddest thing was seeing the number of animals killed by the fire. Even worse were the injured, burned and orphaned animals. 2020 was a tragedy. That same year, I returned three more times to monitor the fires in the Pantanal. And since then, I have continued to return to photograph the region.
