PROJECTS: The Hinterland

THE HINTERLAND -- Part I 

Exhibitions: The Shape of the Environment, Art Lit Lab (invitation), Madison, Wi; The University of Wisconsin-Madison (solo), Madison, Wi; Art & Nature: The Year of the Environment - 50th Anniversary of Earth Day and Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (invitiation), Madison Municipal Building, Madison, WI; American Photography (AP-AI) Latin America Fotografía 6 Los Diez 9 (traveling exhibition); Photo Festival La Gacilly (juried/solo), France; Screened at Visa Pour L'Image, France. 

*This project was supported by the Yves Rocher Foundation Photography Award 

The Hinterland is a book project that explores marginalized rural communities in Brazil’s forgotten semiarid Sertão where its people and land are shaped by years of relentless drought and social exclusion. The region is a window into Brazil’s gaping disparity between the poor in the north and the rich in the south, where thousands of drought migrants have abandoned prosperous cities, like Rio de Janeiro. In the Brazilian imagination, its story is about those who leave– not one of those who stay.  

The Sertao is a place where Brazilians have abandoned as waves of generations migrate to more prosperous cities in the south, like Rio de Janeiro. The region is largely forgotten because it is the country’s poorest and least developed area with little access to water. It is characterized by unforgiving heat, slash-and-burn agriculture, scarce water resources, and severe environmental degradation.  

“You see animals eating trees,” said farmer Joaquim Ferreira, 71, as he watched his land turn to desert. Today what little rain falls is not enough to grow plants. His family lost the seeds because everything they grew died. The plants used to be taller, fuller. Now they risk extinction. “It’s drying. The clouds don’t even come here.” 

Home to nearly 20 million people, the Sertão is one of the world's most populated semi-arid zones in the world. It is always on the brink of rain yet it rarely ever falls. It also has the single largest concentration of rural poverty in Latin America, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with 35 percent living in extreme poverty. This desolate, dusty and hot region lies between the Amazon rainforest to the west and the northeastern coast, covering nine states. The landscape is severely degraded from centuries of cattle raising.  

In 2024, climate researchers have identified the Sertão as a climate change hotspot. The metropolitan area of Petrolina and the Sobradinho reservoir has significant increase in dryness-- from semiarid to arid, also known as desertification. Human-induced climate change has exacerbated droughts and shorter, more intense rainfall, according to researcher Aldrin Pérez-Marin at the National Institute of the Semi-arid (INSA).  

The Amazon and the Northeast are considered Brazil's most vulnerable regions to the devastating impacts of climate change. Thirteen percent of the entire semi-arid region, equivalent to the size of England, is in an advanced stage of desertification, while the rest is at risk for extreme drought events.