Yann Gross: The Jungle Book: Contemporary Stories of the Amazon and Its Fringe

When the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana set out on his search for cinnamon in 1541, he could not have anticipated that his travels would bring him to the bends of the world’s longest river: the Amazon. Long a witness to evangelization campaigns, infrastructure development, and natural resource extraction, the river continues to arouse greed, competition, and fascination in its visitors. Following in the footsteps of past expeditions, The Jungle Book is a visual travel diary comprising discreetly staged scenes that reveal the diverse worlds of contemporary Amazonia and its surrounding areas. Photographer Yann Gross worked with different local communities in order to explore their lives in a time of ecological disintegration. Once immersed in their domestic world, the viewer soon forgets romantic clichés of forgotten lands and noble savages, and begins to question the guiding ideals of progress and development that inform escapist fantasies of the global south.