Estevan has moved the drying stingray so we can string up our backdrop. It’s not high enough, but it seems the best we can do. It feels like an oven and the dehydration is setting in. I stand on an adobe brick. It seems the only brick not in use. Then it breaks under my weight. Now I’m balancing on a broken brick trying to get the people framed against a square white sheet blowing in the wind. I turn the Hasselblad sideways and like a drunken sailor, in the hot sun, I do my best to steady myself. I need glasses. My eyes are burning and I strain to focus. After we finished photographing a man gives me a green cashew. I assumed I was to eat. I felt like I would die from the poisoning. My mouth felt like it had been stabbed with one hundred dentist’s needles. It took six weeks to taste anything again!
Notes from my diary – Kalunga village, Brazil 2014