It takes Emerson Munduruku two hours to metamorphose into Uyra Sodoma, an eco warrior performance artist. Image by Hick Duarte for Vogue Brazil.

Photographer Hick Duarte had the honor of meeting and photographing 12 personalities from the Amazon as the centerpiece of Vogue Brazil’s ‘Hope” September 2020 issue. Four of those personalities are featured on Vogue Brazil covers — and breathtakingly beautiful they are.

The four activists/models are 1) Emerson Munduruku, who transforms into eco warrior performance artist Uyra Sodoma. Emerson is a biologist, a master in Ecology and an educator; 2) Vanda Ortega Witoto, an indigenous activist and nursing technician who is now an internationally-known front-line COVID activist from the region; 3) Rita Teixeira, an educator with MMNEPA — Women's Movement in Northeast Pará — helping to promote emancipation and equity, and extinguishing violence against women in Brazil; 4) Model Emilly Nunes from Belém, Pará.

Pedro Sales styles the Vogue Brazil shoot — and hopefully a beautiful book in the making. Silvio Giorgio handles master-level beauty in the images. Julia Filgueiras is the art director on the project. We will dig deeper into this entire issue — hitting Google Translator — or having my dear friend Clara, who has returned to northern Brazil on the sea, act as translator.

Duarte writes:

“The exchanges and connections of those days resonate very strongly with me today. This was my most intense trip to the Forest and I believe it is one of my most exciting experiences since I started working with fashion. Perhaps it is precisely because of the process of flirting so much with journalism - and because I was doing what at the beginning awoke me to the job I have today, which was to illustrate stories and help tell stories. Immensely grateful for the reception and generosity of these people in this project and for the hard work of this team.”