Identity, Wakatha u

In the early 1970s, Claudia Andujar met the Yanomami Indians in the Amazonian Brazilian rainforest and decided to abandon her career as a photojournalist to live with them. A founding member of the Brazilian NGO Comissão Pró-Yanomami (CCPY), she played a key role at the side of the Yanomami to secure the Brazilian government’s recognition of their land. In 1975–76, after the construction of the Perimetral Norte road, she lent her support for a health center and realized the series of portraits Identité, Wakatha u, intended as a census of the Yanomami population. During this time, she also photographed scenes of daily life and shamanic sessions. Claudia Andujar’s meeting with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain was the catalyst for the exhibition Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest in 2003, which compared contemporary artists’ visions of the world to the shamanic wisdom of a Yanomami village.