I cried the first time I saw the Amazon

I cried the first time I saw the Amazon, that sea of trees that never ends

Lélia Wanick transmits her passion and her fear for the future of the tropical forest after receiving the Gulbenkian Humanity Award for reforesting, together with her husband, the photographer Sebastião Salgado, an area of more than 700 hectares in his native Brazil

When Lélia Wanick (Vitória, Brazil, 76 years old) was awarded the Gulbenkian Humanity Award, in Lisbon, in July, for recovering a degraded forest in her native country, her husband —the renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado— was so excited and with eyes moist with pride, who did not take any photos of him. "As? Shall I take my private photographer and I don't have a photo? ”, Wanick laughs when remembering, in perfect portuñol, the affectionate fight that she dedicated to her life partner for six decades. She begins the interview, conducted after receiving this award, and the happy awardee's eyes light up as soon as she begins to talk about her forest: "Wonderful, impressive, important."

The marriage has worked all their lives in tandem; both in her artistic facet —he is the photographer, she is the designer of her books and exhibitions— and in the environmental one. And in both they have tried to defend the biodiversity of their land. At the end of the 1990s, they acquired the Bulcão farm, in Aimorés (Minas Gerais State, southeastern Brazil), more than 700 hectares of degraded land that belonged to Wanick's in-laws. Today it is an orchard of 2.7 million trees and abundant fauna, home to the Terra Institute that both founded in 1998 for the recovery of forests and springs, as well as a research and training center. “I received the award, but we do this together,” says Wanick. Also together they will inaugurate at the Fernán Gómez Theater in Madrid on the 13th the exhibition Amazônia, which includes the work of six years that shows the beauty and fragility of this tropical forest —without which life on the planet would not be possible— and part of the lives of its inhabitants, who protect it.

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