Photography, Inoperative Ethnography, Naturalism: On Sharon Lockhart’s Amazon Project

Abstract

This essay aims to examine the photographic work carried out by American artist Sharon Lockhart over the course of two anthropological expeditions to the Brazilian Amazon in the 1990s. This work is comprised of two sets of photographs, taken among rural communities of the Aripuaná River and the Apeú-Salvador Island respectively, and a short film shot in the Manaus Opera House. By focusing primarily on the group of photographs titled Interview Locations/ Family Photographs —pictures of empty “interview locations” produced right after the interaction with local informants, and family pictures belonging to the interviewees— the author explores Lockhart’s photography as an original intervention into the historic imaginary that constructed the Amazon as a purely natural space destined to either await or resist cultural and civilizing inscriptions.