Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo (Colombia)
Title: Portrait of the Mura, 2019 – 2021 – The Amazon Rainforest, 2019 – 2021 – Match, the Mura Spiritual Leader, 2019 – 2021
Medium: Medium format 4” x 5” black and White Film, platinum-palladium 8” x 10” prints, scanned and printed on handmade coca paper with a UV printer in Colombia
Date of work: 2019 – 2021
Dimensions: 21” x 17” framed
Description:
Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo’s work bridges the fields of artistic and documentary photography using a range of digital and alternative photographic processes. Since 2011, she has been photographing Indigenous peoples in South and North America affected by mega-projects and climate change. From 2019 to 2021, she traveled to the Brazilian Amazon rainforest to work in collaboration with the ancestral Mura Indigenous people who faced the deforestation of their non-demarcated territories during the Bolsonaro presidency. Carbon dioxide emissions, extensive cattle ranching, and agriculture are turning the rainforest into a savanna. This impacts climate change. McNichols-Torroledo photographed the Indigenous communities with a large format film camera and printed the images in her photo lab. These photographs pay tribute to the long history of Indigenous struggles in the Amazon rainforest to defend their cultural heritage and Mother Nature.