A swamp deer escapes a forest fire in Pocona, Mato Grosso, 2020.
Lalo de Almeida
Science Museum
How can these four images be images of the same region? What force could turn the Pantanal – a tropical wetland spanning Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, full of jaguars, howler monkeys, caimans, swamp deer and vast numbers of fish and birds – into a fire-ravaged wasteland?
Dorado in the Oglio d'Agua River in 2013.
Luciano Candisani
The 200,000 square kilometer wetland – the world's largest – is accustomed to alternating dry and wet seasons. But climate change, deforestation and intensive farming have turned the natural cycles of rain and drought into a grim travesty. In 2020, a record wildfire burned more than a quarter of the region's vegetation cover. The last major fire season was in 2024.
An aerial view showing life bustling with life in the main drainage channel of the floodplain lake of Bahia do Castelo in 2018.
Luciano Candisani
The plight of the fragile ecosystem caught the attention of two photographers, Lalo de Almeida and Luciano Candisani. Their radically different images are presented in Water Pantanal FireA free exhibition opens at the Science Museum in London on February 6 and runs until the end of May.
Volunteer firefighters gather at Rancho Jofre Velho during a catastrophic fire in 2020.
Lalo de Almeida
Kandisani's photographs focus on water and freshwater life in the region.
De Almeida, a documentary photographer, focused on the fires that devastated the region and how it was affected by climate change.
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