What happens when isolation goes beyond a pandemic

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January 17th, 2022

A man cries over his mother's grave in the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery, in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, on Sept. 29, 2020. Iris Gonçalves Alves died at age 54 the previous day from COVID-19, according to the information on her burial record. During the worst times of the pandemic in Manaus, only three relatives could attend a burial in its cemeteries.

Brazilian photographer Raphael Alves has been covering the COVID-19 pandemic in his home state of Amazonas since their first lockdown in March 2020.

Through his photography, Alves highlights how the lockdown intensified some of the socioeconomic inequality of the largest state in Brazil.

Alves’ project is called Insulae. It reflects on the idea that isolation is not just a consequence of the pandemic. There is another isolation, different from what the World Health Organization recommends: ideological isolation — which goes far beyond the geographical, one that peoples of the Amazon have historically lived with.

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