Tommaso Protti
Sao Paulo - São Paulo, Brazil
Tommaso is an Italian documentary photographer. He studied political science in Rome and earned a master's degree in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication. His stories focus on social, political and environmental issues. He published his work on the National Geographic, Le Monde, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Independent and is a contributing photographer for The New York Times. In 2013 was member of Reportage by Getty Images Emerging Talent and received the National Geographic Award at the Eddie Adams Workshop.
www.tommasoprotti.com
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Terra Vermelha
Tommaso Protti
“Terra Vermelha,” which means red earth, is an ongoing project that documents the growing social crisis in Brazil’s Amazon region, in the states of Pará, Amazonas, Rondonia and Roraima.
In the region’s main cities, homicides rates are among the highest in the world. The poor live in precarious shantytowns, where militias and gang warfare rule the streets. The prisons are overflowing, and gangs can easily gain their control. Outside those urban areas, the world’s highest number of environmental and indigenous activists is systematically killed, perpetuating a cycle of impunity.
All of these scenarios are driven by the same forces; poverty, weak institutions, corruption and savage self-interest. More than in other places, in the Amazon region it becomes clear that land is worth more than human life. And on the path towards the destruction of the planet, the first and closest step for mankind is still its own annihilation.
Terra Vermelha
Tommaso Protti
Junior (37) poses with his gun for a portrait in the periphery of Manaus. Junior is a member of the the Familia do Norte drug gang (FDN) and the boss of six drug traffic points in Manaus. He was sentenced to prison twice and claimed to have participated in several raids to kill people belonging to rival drug gangs in Manaus. The Amazonian capital of Manaus is currently in the midst of a violent drug war, with the local gang FDN fighting off the encroaching PCC from Sao Paulo - Brazil’s most powerful drug gang – for control of the city’s drug trade and trafficking routes
Terra Vermelha
Tommaso Protti
Relatives of inmates detained inside the Cremacao police imprisonment facility in Belem, the capital of Pará state. The people above react after hearing the gun shots of a special operations police squad, who fired their weapons while suppressing a revolt inside the prison. The rebellion started due to the conditions of overcrowding inside the cells: 212 inmates shared a space designed for 92 people.
