Published in 2008 by 5 Continents Editions, René Fuerst’s Indiens d’Amazonie: Réminiscences d’un passé lointain returns to the journey that first brought the young Swiss ethnologist into sustained contact with Indigenous communities of the Amazon. At twenty-two, Fuerst travelled in 1955 through Mato Grosso, approaching the Xavante and later communities of the Upper Xingu through relationships he had developed himself. The book brings together a written and photographic account of that encounter and of a rapidly changing world.
Its subject is not Amazonia as an abstract landscape, but the people, research context, and forms of life encountered along a specific expeditionary route. The historical frame includes the work of the Villas Bôas brothers and the creation of the Xingu Indigenous area, giving the photographs a documentary setting that extends beyond portraiture. Fuerst’s later career—as an ethnologist, independent researcher, curator, and frequent visitor to Amazonian communities—also places this volume within a sustained body of observation, while keeping its focus on the decisive 1955 journey rather than attempting to survey the following decades.
The book’s 66 duotone illustrations give the material a concentrated, archival character. Read alongside the accompanying text, the images function as records of encounters, environments, and social life, while also preserving the perspective of a young observer working at the edge of established access. For collectors of photographic books concerned with ethnography, travel, and the history of documentary practice, its value lies in this convergence of personal ambition, field research, and visual record.
The French-language hardcover is a substantial but manageable object: 136 pages in a 28 × 24 cm format. The book concentrates on the beginnings of a long engagement with Amazonian communities. Its combination of personal recollection and photographs gives readers a way to consider how an initial encounter becomes a lasting record, shaped both by the circumstances of the journey and by the author’s later reflection.
