Book review: Tommaso Protti - Terra vermelha

Book Characteristics
Book: Terra Vermelha
Author: Tommaso Protti
Publication date: 2023
Publisher: Void
ISBN: 978-618-5479-00-8
Book type: Softcover with dustjacket
Book size: 21 X 27,8 cm
Number of copies: 1500
Number of pages: 224
About the author
Tommaso Protti is an Italian-born photographer who has been based in Brazil for almost a decade. His work focuses on themes such as crime, the environment and rural conflict. Protti received his education in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Rome Tre, and later obtained a MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from the London College of Communication.
Recommended music
This book pairs well with the album Inca Ore/Grouper by the eponymous artists.
As you might know, I am still very new in my photobook nerd journey but one of the pivotal moment of that journey was when I discovered Void. This greek-based independent publishing house with a very interesting catalogue of books featuring very elaborated designs caught my attention as soon as I stumbled upon their website. In December, they had a great deal allowing anyone buying two books to get a third one for free, and I of course could not miss such a deal. I bought the full pack of their Hunger project (including a first edition of Michael Ackerman’s epilogue) and the book Sleep Creek by Dylan Hausthor & Pia Paulina Guilmoth as I had heard positive feedback about both projects. As I needed a third book to benefit from that deal, and as I was not sure what to order, I simply ordered the first book whose design and description appealed to me.
It is sometimes nice to buy books that you do not have on your wishlist, and that’s how a now sold-out signed copy of “Terra Vermelha” landed in my bookshelf.


The book is the result of 10 years of work by Protti in the brazilian amazonian region, which is often perceived as “a dense, green expanse and a pristine sanctuary inhabited by isolated tribes” and goes a long way to contradict this perception by attempting to give an insight on the other, darker side of this vast region.
This utopian view of the amazon, which is sometimes depicted in Sebastiao Salgado’s work among others (this is not a diss), is challenged in Protti’s work starting from the first pages. The book opens with 3 full-spread images showing the boundaries between the forest, and the zone where it was burnt followed by an image of a corpse.



The book’s opening images.
This sets the tone of the book which deals with both environmental issues – the loss of biodiversity, the climatic impact of destroying a forest and pollution – and social issues – the difficulty faced by indigenous tribes, the violence towards small or landless peasants perpetrated by illegal loggers or cattle ranchers and the general poverty that reigns in this region of Brazil. It is likely that I miss some other issues which are sadly staying quite blurry after going through the book. And this is the biggest problem I had with this publication. For a book coming from a photojournalist, it is lacking in information. The images tell a lot, allow to have an idea of all the violence and destruction happening in the region, but it will not provide you with in depth knowledge of the power at play and the actors of the tense situation captured. One could hope that the text included at the start and end of the book would help, but it consists mainly of an explanation of how Protti approached the region and personal anecdotes (not uninteresting, but one could have hoped to have more insights on the lives of the subjects of the photographs).
This problem might be due to the publisher chosen to publish this work, which is mostly focusing on the artistic aspect of photography and less on it’s epistemic value. This does not mean that it is not a pleasant read, simply that if you are looking for a purely photojournalistic experience, you might still be hungry after going through Protti’s project.

According to the author himself, the goal of this book is to contrast with the utopian view of the amazon. This is achieved in the book, but makes it fall in another category that might not be the one a photojournalist wants to be in: violence porn. Seeking shock value is not something I am opposed to in itself, as soon as this shock value serves a greater purpose such as informing the reader on the reasons why these shocking images are existing and perhaps even showing how the situation can be improved or who is working towards improving it. We can feel that the authors of this book are aware of this risk of falling in the violence porn category and tried to mitigate it for example by not showing full spread when showing images of crime scene one after another, and by trying to add some contexts to the images at the end of the book with those sensational titles relating to the images taken. I believe it somehow worked, but more could have been expected to help the viewer understand the social and environmental context of the region.

Perhaps, I am wrong to expect all of this from this book and perhaps that its goal was more humble: providing an intriguing view of the Amazon which would push the reader to deepen their knowledge by themselves, helped by the “newspaperish” titles at the end. Perhaps the goal is simply to portray the impact of poverty on communities and their natural environment. And if that is the case, the book is a success.
The images are generally striking, and the sequencing compensates the lack of epistemic value with aesthetic one. A particularly successful sequence is when tension is built up by showing the burning forest and crying families in full spreads to then repeatedly show corpses in images covering less space, letting the viewer breath. This way of presenting things really insists on the catastrophe at play when nature and human life is scorned.





One of the book’ strongest bit is when images of crime scenes are preceded and succeeded by images of the burning forest.
Another thing to note is that most of the images are taken at night time, which increases the very harsh aspect of the book. The flash is used perfectly to illuminate the night and reveal some of the atrocities happening when the sun is away. The photographs featured in the book are individually very strong and form a decently coherent whole.

Overall, the book does a good enough job at shining a light on the environmental and social crisis that damages this region of the world more than it should. If one is looking to have a beautifully illustrated state of play of the situation in the Amazon, this book might be a good purchase. If you are after a photojournalistic book, that follows a clear narrative trame depicting those socio-environmental issues with high precision, I believe that one could be disappointed?
As a photography lover, looking for aesthetic representation of the world, I was satisfied as there is a certain glory in transforming devastating situations into well orchestrated frames.






The book can also serve as a good starting point to a conversation focusing on what purpose photojournalism as a book should aim for in order to be deemed succesful, and how such projects can be better presented in the book format, which is a discussion you can take part in by commenting on this article!
Thanks for taking the time to read this review, there will be more in the future among some other hopefully interesting articles. In order not to miss any, do not hesitate to subscribe to my newsletter with the form below.