Claudia Andujar: Lives of Resistance
Genocídio do Yanomami (Yanomami Genocide) is a new book by photographer Claudia Andujar, whose decades‑long work has documented and fought for the rights of the Yanomami people in Brazil.
By Gaia Squarci. Photographs by Claudia Andujar.
Intimate portraits and candid moments dominate the book, creating a powerful sense of proximity. The photographs, shot in black and white between 1971 and 1989 and unpublished until now, were printed and rephotographed under warm light with shifting direction and intensity. The same image appears multiple times under different lighting, constructing a cinematic rhythm in which stills seem to come alive through the three‑dimensionality and material of each print.
The Yanomami are one of the largest Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, living across remote regions of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. As hunter‑gatherers and horticulturalists, their care of the land has protected vast stretches of rainforest. Over decades they have endured ongoing violence and threats from illegal miners, deforestation, and disease, conditions made worse by state policies that have normalised dispossession and turned episodic crises into a sustained humanitarian emergency.
Beyond her artistic practice, Andujar co‑founded the Pro‑Yanomami Commission in 1978 to expose mining devastation, support health programmes, and campaign for land rights. Working with Yanomami leaders such as Davi Kopenawa, this campaign led to the official demarcation of the Yanomami Indigenous Territory in 1992.
Genocídio do Yanomami is published by VOID and available at €58.00.
