WATER PANTANAL FIRE
The special exhibition Water Pantanal Fire makes its European debut in the International Maritime Museum Hamburg. We are proud to host this exhibition on the Pantanal between February the 7th and April the 6th 1015. the show was organised by Documenta Pantanal, featuring 64 photographs by Lalo de Almeida and Luciano Candisani.

Luciano Candisani. Dorado in the Olho-d’água River. Cabeceira do Prata Ranch Private Natural Heritage Reserve, Jardim, Mato Grosso do Sul, May 2013
and
Lalo de Almeida. Fire sweeps through the vegetation at Paraíso Ranch in Nhecolândia, in South Pantanal. Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, August 2, 2024.
A visual chronicle of life and death is set out in the exhibition Water Pantanal Fire. A year after its inaugural season in São Paulo, for an audience of 15,000 visitors, the show-manifesto lands in Europe to present, with the force of paradoxes so well reflected in photography, the exuberance and tragedy of the planet’s largest floodplain, the Pantanal. The European premiere will be at the International Maritime Museum Hamburg, in Germany, from February 7th to April 6th. Ten days after the German finissage, the exhibition will arrive at the National Museum of Natural History and Science in Lisbon on April 16th and stay in Portugal until June 25th.
Curator Eder Chiodetto has brought together 64 photographs by two of Brazil’s leading photo-documentarians, namely Lalo de Almeida, a photojournalist who collaborates for newspapers such as Folha de S. Paulo, and Luciano Candisani, a contributor to National Geographic magazine. The images were inspired by extreme counterpoints: the fauna and flora of Brazil’s biome and the fires spreading in the region between 2020 and 2024.

The photographs that make up the exhibition – organised by the Documenta Pantanal initiative, with the support of BTG, Itaú, RODOBENS and CSN – reveal the technical mastery of their authors, but not only that, they were taken in completely inhospitable settings. Luciano Candisani pointed his lens at life around the water in the largest wetlands on the planet, during the imposing Pantanal floods, from 2012 to 2021. Characterised by a rare combination of technical excellence and expressiveness, the submerged, terrestrial and aerial images bear witness to the grandeur of water and the resilience of life. An adverse scenario that is the preference of this photographer, who specialises in capturing the world’s ecosystems.
When the Pantanal was almost more fire than water in 2020, Lalo de Almeida focussed on the death of millions of animals and native vegetation in a massive fire. An area of almost 45,000 square kilometres was burnt, according to the National Institute for Space Research, and Almeida denounced some of this devastation with an impactful power of synthesis. Entitled Pantanal in Flames, the series of ten photos was honoured with the prestigious World Press Photo award in the Environment category.

Access the exhibition’s virtual tour
Both Luciano Candisani’s and Lalo de Almeida’s photographs have a crucial socio-environmental contribution in their DNA. Curator Eder Chiodetto emphasises how the photographers are ‘visual chroniclers who often seek partnerships with scientists and researchers’. Chiodetto goes on to say that, in order to achieve the results shown in this exhibition, ‘the two of them created complex logistics and exposed themselves to various types of danger. It is in works like these, which combine idealism, passion and militancy, that photography reaches its peak, becoming an open window to reveal the idiosyncrasies and the sublime of the world.’
Water Pantanal Fire evokes the concept of paradox because, despite the antagonistic images, the exhibition converges on the logical truth that the conservation of the Pantanal is important for the world. ‘By taking the exhibition to Hamburg and Lisbon, we have begun to achieve our goal of echoing this warning cry even further afield. More than defending the obvious need to conserve our natural heritage, we want to call on audiences around the world to realise the seriousness of the climate crisis and to think about what needs to be done to contain it,’ warn Mônica Guimarães and Teresa Bracher, coordinators of Documenta Pantanal.

Convergence
Curator Eder Chiodetto was inspired by awe. The images of the arson fires that devastated the Pantanal in 2020 made him follow the work of photographers entrenched in the fires, when he was struck by the urgency of the photos taken by Lalo de Almeida. This coincided with the launch of a new book by Luciano Candisani, Terra D’Agua Pantanal (Origem, 2022), which portrays ten years of photographic expeditions in the biome. ‘In this sense, the exhibition has a didactic character, like a manifesto to draw people’s attention not only to what the Pantanal is and its beauties, but also to the threats that surround the biome,’ says Almeida.
Candisani’s creative motivation was, and still is, a very strong connection with nature, especially water. ‘I adopted the tool of photography to record my interest, mainly exploring the underwater aquatic environment. Today, I’ve been on a journey for more than 30 years in search of interpretations, visual narratives and themes that are fundamental to me, especially the conservation of large remaining natural spaces, such as the Pantanal,‘ he adds.
The idea of contrasting the two sets of images was the spark for Chiodetto, with his attentive eye, to idealise the show. ‘The fair measure of the encounter between the two shows not only the death drive and the life drive, but above all how much we can work as a society to rethink what we are doing to the planet,’ comments the curator.

High resolution images available HERE
BIOGRAPHIES
Lalo de Almeida (São Paulo, 1970)
In Milan, Italy, studied photography at the European Institute of Design. For 30 years he has worked for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, where he has developed award-winning multimedia narratives such as Um Mundo de Muros, Desigualdade Global, A Batalha de Belo Monte and Crise do Clima. In 2021, his photo series Pantanal em Chamas was awarded first place in the Environment category at World Press Photo. Also in 2021, he was chosen as Ibero-American Photographer of the Year by POY (Pictures of the Year) Latam. Alongside photojournalism, he has developed photographic documentation work such as the Distopia Amazônica project, which received the Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography and was the overall winner in the Long-Term Projects category at World Press Photo in 2022.
Luciano Candisani (São Paulo, 1970)
Brazilian photographer and author dedicated to ethnographic and environmental themes. With a degree in Biological Oceanography from the Universidade de São Paulo – USP, he began his career photographing the underwater environment for the Oceano Austral in 1995. His work deals with traditional populations, nature and the conservation of ecosystems and species around the world. He has worked in 40 countries, including the icy regions of the Arctic and Antarctica. His photographs appear in author’s books, magazines and exhibitions in museums and galleries in Brazil and abroad. The author of seven photographic books, he is part of The Photo Society, an exclusive collective of photographers with complete articles published in the main edition of National Geographic magazine. He is also a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP), whose mission is to promote the protection of threatened environments and populations through photography and film.
Eder Chiodetto (São Paulo, 1965)
Curator of independent photography, publisher of photobooks Fotô Editorial and director of the Ateliê Fotô Study Centre. He was curator of photography at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo between 2005 and 2021 and mentor of the Arte na Fotografia programme on the Arte1 channel. As a curator, he has organised more than 180 exhibitions in Brazil, Europe, the United States and Japan. He is the author of the books O Lugar do Escritor (Cosac Naify, 2002, winner of the 2004 Jabuti Prize), Geração 00: A Nova Fotografia Brasileira (Edições Sesc, 2011), Curadoria em Fotografia: da pesquisa à exposição (Ateliê Fotô / Funarte, 2013), Ser Diretor (Ateliê Fotô, 2018), among others. He recently curated the exhibitions Outros Navios: Fotografias de Eustáquio Neves (Sesc Ipiranga and Sesc Rio Preto, in 2022 and 2023 respectively); Água Pantanal Fogo (Instituto Tomie Ohtake, 2024) and Claudia Andujar: Cosmovisão (Itaú Cultural, 2024).
Documenta Pantanal
Documenta Pantanal is an initiative that connects professionals from different fields who are committed to the urgent need to make the fragilities and riches of the Mato Grosso Pantanal better known to the public. Working for a living, productive and exuberant Pantanal, the institution creates, provokes and supports actions and connections to map the region’s culture, point out preservation solutions and generate protection resources for the development of campaigns that mobilise and expand partnerships to respond to emergency and chronic situations in the Pantanal, from arson to water loss. As well as broadcasting reports, articles and web series, the initiative supports and produces documentaries that portray the Pantanal in an original and in-depth way, expanding the supply of works with the potential to circulate and raise awareness.
CREDITS
WATER PANTANAL FIRE
Photographs by Lalo de Almeida and Luciano Candisani
Curatorship
Eder Chiodetto
General Coordination
Mônica Guimarães, Teresa Cristina Ralston Bracher
Exhibition Project
Heloisa Vivanco
Production Coordination
Cassia Rossini
Production
Isadora Falconi
Local Production
Adelaide D Esposito, Rafael Moretti
Visual Identity and Graphic Design
Vitor Cesar
Designer
Karime Zaher
Editorial Coordination
Heloisa Vasconcellos
Text
Teté Martinho
Translation
Anke Schüttel (German) and Anthony Doyle (English)
Map Design
Alessandro Meiguins
Direction of Image and Videomapping
André Grynwask, Pri Argoud (Um Cafofo)
Video Soundtrack
Marcelo Pellegrini
Photo Prints
Estúdio Kelly Polato
Management
Júlia Sousa
Press Office Brazil
Baobá Comunicação – Cultura e Conteúdo
Press Office Europe
Raquel Lima
Support
BTG, Itaú, RODOBENS and CSN
With the contribution of
Candido e Teresa Bracher
A project by
Documenta Pantanal
Coordination International Maritime Museum Hamburg
Patrick Rivière
Online communication International Maritime Museum Hamburg
Evgenia Tiourine and Damián Morán Dauchez
Press contact International Maritime Museum Hamburg
Jens Meyer-Odewald – presse.extern@imm-hamburg.de