“Pure apocalypse”: a photographer’s journey through the Pantanal wildfires | Photography

toAlu de Almeida is a documentary photographer based in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2021, his photo essay Pantanal Ablaze won first place in the Environmental Stories category in the World Press Photo Contest. In 2022, he won the Eugene Smith Fellowship in Humanitarian Photography and the World Press Photo Long-Term Project Award for his work “Amazonian Dystopia,” which documents the exploitation of the world’s largest tropical forest.

I have been photographing social and environmental issues for over 30 years, especially in the Amazon region. 2020 was no different. News of the out-of-control fires devastating the Pantanal began to catch my attention. So, I decided with one of my fellow journalists to go see what was happening for myself.

It was a shock when we arrived in the area. The fire was out of control and there was almost no extinguishing. I’ve seen many fires in the Amazon, but nothing compares to this. The saddest thing was seeing the number of animals killed by the fire. Even worse are injured, burned and orphaned animals. 2020 was a tragedy. That same year, I returned three more times to monitor fires in the Pantanal. Since then, I have continued to return to photograph the area.

We were on our way to a farm in rural Aquidoana, where firefighters and battalion members were battling a large fire. Along the way, we began to see several plumes of smoke on the horizon. I stopped to photograph a small fire near Paraiso Ranch. Within a few minutes, the flames, driven by the wind, gained strength and speed, forming a column of smoke that extended for miles. We had to leave quickly so as not to be engulfed in flames.

The unbearable heat, the noise of burning plants, and the suffocating smoke, all covered in orange light, is a sight I will never forget. The end of the pure world.

Several fires in 2020 engulfed the main road that runs through the southern part of the Pantanal, BR-262. Surrounded by the fire on all sides, many animals took refuge in the water of small ponds located along the side of the road.

On the day this photo was taken, we saw dozens of swamp deer (Blastocerus dichotomy) In these small lakes, a sight unimaginable in normal times. Usually shy around people, the deer seemed startled, unresponsive to our presence, and had no other choice to survive.

When we first arrived in the Pantanal to cover the 2020 fires, we were shocked. The hotel, which served as a base for firefighters and battalion members, was surrounded by flames and was evacuated. Despite warnings about the fire situation, there was no organized response, and the Pantanal was left to fend for itself. There were thousands of fires spread throughout the biome.

One day, while traveling along the Transpantanera Highway, I came across a lone firefighter who was watching a wooden bridge burn without reacting. “There’s nothing to do here,” he told me in a resigned voice. “The fires in the Pantanal will only end when it rains or when everything burns. Whichever comes first.” And he was right. The fire did not stop until the rain fell.

In August 2024, the Pantanal began burning intensely again. My idea was to get to the place where the fire that hit the Nicolandia area started. Halfway there, we started to see the first signs of fire. Drifting smoke was billowing as we drove along the sandy road, so we stopped at a resort in Paraiso Ranch to get information and see if we could move forward. The tall trees surrounding the house were burning slowly, but they were still a safe distance away.

But within minutes, the winds intensified and what had been just a small speck of fire turned into a thick wall of flame and smoke. The air current created by the heat from the fire would further fuel the animal, sucking it forward through the forest, destroying everything in sight. The heat, smoke, orange-tinged air and crackle of burning trees created this hellish atmosphere. Seeing a fire like this up close is a terrifying experience. That night, when I put my head on the pillow, I couldn’t stop thinking about this scene.

The Transpantanera Highway is a park road located in the northern Pantanal, and is perhaps one of the best places in Brazil to see wildlife. During the 2020 fires, it was common to find dead and charred animals on the side of the road, especially crocodiles, snakes and turtles, which have more difficulty moving.

But the saddest and most surprising thing is finding survivors. Whether injured or not, the animals looked like zombies, completely lost, not knowing where to go in the smoke. While escaping a fire or searching for a source of water amidst a severe drought, it was common to find crocodiles, cooties, armadillos, monkeys and deer wandering aimlessly along the road.

While photographing the fires in the isolated area of ​​Serra do Amolar, near Corumba, I had the opportunity to accompany the work of the Federal Environment Agency’s Breffogo fire brigade in Ibama. They are the most qualified workforce to fight forest fires in Brazil. This group, made up of farmers from Piaui state, drove thousands of kilometers to help fight the fires in the Pantanal region.

The resilience and commitment of these men was impressive. They worked 12 hours a day, under 40-degree sun, amidst fire and smoke, risking their lives. While I could only handle a few hours of filming in these conditions, they spent the entire day there. They are unsung heroes. Being alongside these firefighters and watching them work is the only thing that kept me optimistic during the fires of 2020.

In 2024, I returned to Santa Teresa. I knew there were several fires burning on the farm, but I had no idea it would be 2020 again. The fire had just swept through, and as before, I saw a huge number of dead animals: tapirs, monkeys, birds. I previously thought the 2020 fires were just a freak accident.

But seeing it all again, in person, made me wonder if this was the new reality in the Pantanal. The new normal. The biome is highly resilient, but with these tragedies recurring at short intervals, and with frequent and intense wildfires fueled by water loss and drought, there is no time to recover.

Worse still: Even with people now better prepared and more aware of what is happening in the Pantanal, nothing has been able to contain the fires. Seeing it all up close was painful. Reality check.

The reality of the Pantanal serves as a very instructive example of the effects of human actions on Earth. I would like viewers of my photos not to look at them as something far away that is happening on the other side of the world. We are all connected on this planet.

Pantanal Water Fire, featuring works by Lalo de Almeida and Luciano CandesaniOn display at the Science Museum, London from 6 February to 31 May.