Love, Simplicity, and Spiritual Richness

Photography By Juan Camilo Hernandez Diaz

Photographer Juan Camilo Hernandez Diaz shares his documentation of the indigenous communities in the Amazon jungle. He talks about feeling small in the Amazon River, a petrified cat, and appreciating life in a different way.

Amazonas, Colombia

You are sharing the images you took of the indigenous communities of the Amazon jungle in Colombia - why was documenting this culture important to you? What made you want to go?

I was working at a small agency in Bogota and received a job offer to work with a company that takes students into this “adventure” trips in Colombia. Without even thinking I said yes. This gave me the chance to visit the Amazon 3 times in one month.

Even as a Colombian, living in the capital, the amazon region has a mystery. It is this magical place inside your country that you don’t really visit but you dream about it. This was the perfect situation to finally discover this place and stop just dreaming about it or watching it on TV.

What was the journey like getting there?

Getting there is not as mystical as people might imagine. I took a flight from Bogota to Leticia and then inside is not that difficult to move around if you know the right people. As soon as you put one foot out of the plane in Leticia, the amazon welcomes you with that warm and extremely humid weather and a lot of mosquitos, you know instantly you are not in your comfort zone.

I remember taking a bus to the first place we stayed. I needed to wait for some other people in the middle of the road to show them where they needed to stop. It was completely dark and when I turned on my flashlight I saw a petrified cat on the side of the road, later a local will tell me that cat might be just poisoned by snake.

What did you experience?

We stayed in a Maloca, which is a community house of the Amazon people, there we slept in hammocks, next to each other and cleaned ourselves in a river next to it. We ate with our hands and used plantain tree leaves to serve our food. We did this mostly for environmental reasons so whatever we don’t eat can just come back to the nature.

From what you experienced, what is their relationship like with the world outside of the villages? How is this affecting their culture and way of life?

The moment you are in this communities you have this strange feeling of being in paradise, but also acknowledge this are forgotten communities by the state. Their ethics, love, simplicity, and spiritual richness are huge and contagious. In that place you learn to appreciate life in a different way, you connect with the nature and with the simple things this planet offers you for free. But somehow you wish they had more. And I’m not talking about a big TV or a new iphone. But some health insurance or facilities whenever they need this kind of attention, better infrastructure to build their houses and schools and not living on the edge of a natural catastrophe and lose everything.

We also had a time to remember the essentials of being kids. Being the kids without a Nintendo, iphone or cable TV. We played with the kids of the community and enjoyed the simple feeling of being there, laughing in the nature, running, playing some football in the middle of the jungle. It was a moment to disconnect yourself from everything.

What did you learn?

After being with these communities and having all these mixed feelings, the perfect place to breath deep, think, and appreciate this experience is the amazon river and the jungle. The animals, the plants, the path. Appreciate every step, every tree, every animal. And then go by boat into small canals and rivers until you are in the big amazon river. A moment to go breathless and feel like a little ant in this planet.

And in my case was a moment to love the nature and hate the civilization we lived in that constantly destroys this place. And as we don’t get many opportunities to visit these areas of the planet, we feel like is a TV thing, is something that happens just too far away and don’t affect me. I guess right now we believe Mars is closer to us than our jungles, rivers, oceans and mountains.

What's next for you?

This was few years ago… Now I’m living in Germany, and I miss the jungle, the mountains and all these amazing places I had the opportunity to visit in Colombia. I’m capturing the streets of Hamburg now and working in a small project showing “The DOM” This country fair that comes to Hamburg twice in the year and it gives me the feeling of unity. Everyone comes with friends and families to play the games, ride the roller coaster, eat and drink. But everyone is there. Probably the CEO of a company net to the homeless. And I like to capture the people in there, the workers that probably travel the country all year long and the people that come for those hours of fun and I might say even freedom in a society that is controlled and organized.