Florence Goupil’s Indigenous Community photography restores Hope in Humanity [@florence.goupil]

While many lives were saved in the beautiful unification of ancient knowledge and community care, COVID still took the lives of many elders. Their deaths marked the larger interruption of the life-saving transmission of knowledge about biodiversity within their communities.  

Florence Goupilbegan cataloged Indigenous relationships with the natural world in her The Healing Plants series to preserve the sacred ethnobotanical knowledge and raise awareness about Indigenous communities.

Now a National Geographic Explorer and Contributor, Pulitzer Center Grantee, and acclaimed speaker, Florence Goupil continue photographing Indigenous communities’ lives and practices in South America. Her photos feature vivid detailing and evoke a sense of catharsis in viewers thanks to the warm and deep color palettes and intense focus on human subjects and emotions.

Goupil documents issues that portray the delicate symbiosis humans must uphold with each other and nature to survive peacefully. She explores indigenous people’s rights, ethnobotany, the first nations’ living memory, and the environment in the Andes and Amazon. Her photos restore viewers’ hope in humanity by showing us communities that center on preservation, community, and care. Implicitly, her photos move and urge us to care about the world beyond our immediate.

Discover more from GUAP’s Arts and Culture section here.