Last Wildest Place

LAST WILDEST PLACE is a long-term, ongoing project based on a simple fact: The Amazon Matters. Working with several NGOs (most often Upper Amazon Conservancy), I have been photographing this globally-critical landscape in the face of the many constantly evolving threats to the unique social, cultural, and environmental fabric of this place.



At over a billion acres, the Amazon Basin is bigger than the next two largest tropical forests combined. It alone accounts for half the planet’s remaining rainforest, maybe 30% of all terrestrial species, 20% of all freshwater, and 20% of our global oxygen. It provides climate stability for the entire planet and the carbon stored in its forests—and released by its deforestation—matters to us all.



Within the Amazon, the Purús/Manu region in southeastern Peru is one of the most remote and inaccessible areas, where still-intact and uniquely biodiverse ecosystems provide sustenance for settled indigenous communities and home to perhaps the highest concentration of isolated “uncontacted” tribes on Earth. While still largely undeveloped, this last wildest place is increasingly threatened by extractive activities including logging, gold mining (Peru is the largest gold producer in South America and 6th or 7th in the world), narco activities, oil and gas development, cattle grazing, agricultural expansion, Christian missionaries, and the legal and illegal road construction projects that open access to previously inaccessible forests with devastating, often irrevocable, impacts on the ecosystems and all who depend on them.



I first visited the Purús/Manu region in 2015 and have returned over a dozen times spending about a year total in the jungle. The pandemic, which limited legitimate expeditions as well as enforcement patrols, has left the region especially vulnerable to increased illegal activity. Out of respect for the communities, many remote and with limited healthcare, we halted visits during the pandemic and continue to be cautious. But now, as the region is reopening slowly, raising awareness is more critical than ever. Recent trips include to several areas in the remote western headwaters documenting the fight for indigenous land rights including in the face of agricultural expansion and narco-led land grabs.