Our human tribe

A famed photographer's exhibition about Amazonia prompts Jane Cacouris to consider the wider issues.

Jane Cacouris

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

Amazonia from the air.

Neil Palmer/CIAT, Wikimedia Commons.

'What drew me back to the Amazon? …it was to savour afresh the unparalleled beauty of this vast region. For me, it is a last frontier, a mysterious universe of its own, where the immense power of nature can be felt as nowhere else on earth.'

These are the words of world renowned Brazilian photographer, Sebastião Salgado, in the foreword of his book, Amazônia. Over a period of six years, Salgado travelled around the Brazilian Amazon photographing its sweeping landscapes: forests, rivers, mountains, as well as the people who live there. A photograph of a Yanomani tribe on the edge of a vast vista with a towering mountain shrouded in cloud in the distance is an extraordinary snapshot of his travels. Salgado documented the daily lives of a dozen indigenous tribes, capturing on camera their warm family bonds, traditional dances and rituals, the artistry of their body painting and means of survival – hunting and fishing. Although Salgado was unable to communicate by speaking to the tribes he visited, he describes vividly how the human emotions he shared with his hosts - to love, laugh, cry and to feel happy or angry – served as their common language. He says:

I felt at home in my own tribe, that of all humans, where myriad systems of logic and reason are interwoven with my own, with those of Homo Sapiens.

During a recent trip to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, I visited Salgado’s Amazônia exhibition at the Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) in the centre of the city. The photographs are awe inspiring, all in black and white. They depict lush rainforest vegetation, winding rivers and waterfalls. Beautiful people with dark eyes, mainly naked, dressed, feathered and painted according to their tribal traditions sit against a black canvas backdrop or are portrayed in their natural surroundings. Salgado’s talent lies in capturing the epic beauty of the region’s landscapes, but also the delicate detail of the individual faces of the people he photographs. Each person looked straight at the camera lens – and as I looked back at them, it was as if I could see a little of their soul and personality. To the right of each portrait is the name of the person, and a note about their role in the tribe; a reminder that each face is not just a stunning photograph, but a human being who is valued and respected.

But Salgado’s portrayal of the Amazon rainforest, often referred to as “the world’s lung,” is not simply remarkable visual artistry. It is a powerful reminder of a number of issues that we collectively face today as a global tribe of human beings.

For over 10,000 years, humans have enjoyed an inter-connectedness with our natural environment, tending and living off the land. And this is still the case with the Amazonian tribes who rely so tangibly on tapping into the rainforest’s renewable wealth and provision – its animals, fruit, nuts and medicinal plants. A growing body of evidence shows that globally, indigenous people are especially good at sustainably protecting their territories. This is no exception in the Amazon; the indigenous reserves legally ringfenced by the Brazilian government are the areas that are most pristine. The areas where tribes have been driven out have been damaged irretrievably.

With our human quest to develop, the past two hundred years has seen a slow positive global trajectory towards eliminating absolute poverty, reducing conflicts and improving human rights. Encouraging on paper. But this positive change has come at a huge cost to our environment. Ironically, the same expanding global economy which has driven improvements in development and social justice, is based on fossil fuels and high consumption of natural resources causing climate change, mass extinctions and pollution. The results of these changes are hitting the world’s poorest communities the hardest – those who have done the least to cause them. The delicate balance that has existed between humans and our natural environment for millennia is being thrown out of kilter.

COP27, the annual UN global climate conference took place in Egypt at the end of 2022 and the impact of the climate crisis on vulnerable countries was finally on the agenda. It is promising to see growing public support from across the world for action. More people than ever before – including Christians and churches – are speaking up for climate justice, campaigning, joining marches and praying for change. Christian NGOs and pressure groups, such as Tearfund, Christian Action, and World Vision to name a few, are often at the forefront of climate campaigns.

So why are Christians calling for climate action? First, it’s an issue of ownership. As campaigner Ruth Valerio explains: the Bible tells them that creation was made by Jesus, through Jesus and for Jesus. Therefore, this world that was made brimming with abundance and vitality has immense value to God. The world is not ours to do with as we please, it belongs to its creator who has entrusted it to humans to care for. Second, it’s an issue of justice. The outworking of climate breakdown, such as global temperatures rising, floods, drought and extreme weather events has a disproportionate impact on people in poverty and who are already vulnerable, affecting their livelihoods, health and security. Christians believe that we’re all made ’in the image of God’. This speaks powerfully of equality between each one of us within our global human tribe.

Therefore acting justly means responding to the needs of our global neighbours, not only our immediate communities. The Bible says ‘Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy’. Christians – especially those living in privileged countries with social safety nets and funds to invest in climate resilience – are asked to stand up for equality and justice, calling on those in positions of power to make decisions that protect those who are more vulnerable, as well as this Earth that belongs to God.

At COP27 these Christian groups joined with countries vulnerable to the impacts of climate change to call for justice in climate financing. It’s a simple but radical case of compensation; rich nations who have already used far more than their fair share of carbon to develop their economies should now pay for the unavoidable “loss and damage” experienced by those whose homes, livelihoods and even lives are being lost as a result of the climate crisis. The protection of the Amazon also remains a critical theme.

Addressing the COP27 conference, Brazilian President Elect Lula said,

There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon.

Visiting the Amazon rainforest with my family in 2019 I was stunned, like Salgado, by its majesty and magnitude. Sleek, dark waters teeming with fish and crocodiles, trees with trunks that curved and curled, and the cacophony of sounds and song – amphibians, birds and beasts - that accompanied the sudden blackness of the night that fell like a curtain. This is creation as God meant it to be – in all its life and vitality. Can our vast human tribe, scattered and concentrated across the earth, who all laugh and cry and love under this single sky, unite and make the critical decisions needed to care for each other and our world? The protection of Amazonia is only one part of the solution, but it’s an integral part. So will we act? Before it’s too late and Salgado’s extraordinary photographs become simply a segment of history showing future generations the way it used to be?

Review

Art

Awe and wonder

Culture

16 July 2025

5 min read

This gallery refresh adds drama to the story of art

Rehanging the Sainsbury Wing revives the emotion of great art

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

An art gallery arch reveals a suspended crucifix and other paintings in a distant room

The Sainsbury Wing interior.

The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery has recently reopened after closure for two years for building works. There was controversy over the designs for the Sainsbury Wing in the planning stage but its use, once built, to tell the story of the early stages in the development of Western art was widely welcomed and appreciated.

The story that it told is essentially the story of Christian art and so the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing together with the rehanging of the National Gallery’s collection provides an opportunity to review that story. As a result of the completed work over 1,000 works of art - a larger proportion of the collection than has been previously displayed - trace the development of painting in the Western European tradition from the 13th to the 20th centuries from beloved favourites to paintings never previously seen in the National Gallery.

The Sainsbury Wing features works from the medieval and Renaissance periods. Painting came of age during this time. It moved from manuscript illumination to images on panel and canvas, overtaking metalwork, tapestry and sculpture as the most popular and prestigious art form in Europe.

An opening room contains works from the 14th to the 16th centuries, including The Wilton Diptych and Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Virgin of the Rocks, which together ask visitors to consider the full spectrum of what painting can do. This introductory room gives a sense of what these paintings were for and how they were used. Painting’s rise in status was due to all the things it can do such as tell complex stories, convey human emotions, fool the eye, capture a likeness, make viewers laugh, weep, pray and think. This room provides a sample of those achievements and the various functions painting fulfilled.

Throughout the Sainsbury Wing, new display cases are used to show paintings as objects viewed from all sides, not simply as flat panels on walls. Medieval altarpieces often had winged panels that could be opened or closed depending on the season or occasion. An example is included here to show how such hinged panels were used.

From this introductory room spanning the period, visitors can follow either a Northern European route or Italian route around the space, enabling influences between both to be highlighted. The key change explored on both routes is that artists in this period began to create a convincing illusion of reality in their paintings.

The earliest paintings in the National Gallery Collection were made in central Italy nearly 800 years ago. These naturalistic and intimate images of love, grief and suffering responded to a new interest in the humanity of Christ. A chapel-like space is entirely dedicated to Piero della Francesca whose work, with its cool colour palette and keen sense of space and light, possesses a dignified solemnity. Another room focuses on the spiritual power of gold-ground scenes of devotion, exploring the way gold in paintings was used to evoke the timeless, spiritual significance of Christ, the Virgin and saints, and set these holy figures apart from our world.

The galleries in the Sainsbury Wing were designed to evoke, for visitors, a Renaissance Basilica. Its architectural features make it possible to display paintings in a similar way to how they would have originally been encountered. The central galleries form the nave of the basilica and all the altarpieces displayed are now there. These galleries are devoted to works made in Florence, Venice, and Siena. The early Florentine room represents the principal point of departure for this new art. In the Venetian room we see the development of perspective, while the Siena room resembles a side chapel in the basilica.

An altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence by Jacopo di Cione and his workshop has been reconstructed and sits on an altar-like plinth to evoke the view of it originally seen by worshippers. Predella panels by Fra Angelico are displayed in a case in front of this altarpiece giving an indication of the way in which predellas interacted with a larger, grander altarpiece. The positioning of these two works also illustrates the movement in terms of realism found in the paintings of this period. The Ascension scene on the altarpiece depicts a statue-like ascended Christ while Fra Angelico’s resurrected Christ in the predella is more realistically floating in the air.

In a first for the National Gallery, Segna di Bonaventura’s Crucifix is visible down the central spine of the Sainsbury Wing, suspended from the ceiling. This enables today’s audiences to view the work in the way it would have been seen in the 14th century. Painted crucifixes were common in 13th- and 14th-century Italian churches, often displayed high-up like this one. Rood screens on which such crucifixes were originally placed were often destroyed in the Counter Reformation, which led to crucifix’s then being hung from the ceiling, as is the case here.

The rehang also presents several works back on display after long-term conservation projects. The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian by Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Piero del Pollaiuolo is back on show after nearly three years of conservation and scientific examination.

The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before.

Despite the religious and political upheaval caused by the Reformation, the arts also flourished in Northern Europe during this time. Prints transformed the exchange of artistic ideas. Christians were encouraged to use images as a focus for meditation on the lives of Christ and the saints and paintings that were meant to be handled and examined close-up were created for the private devotion of members of religious orders and laypeople. Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach were key figures, with Dürer’s prints, portraits, altarpieces and non-religious subjects transforming painting both in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond.

Christianity became the predominant power shaping European culture after classical antiquity, inspiring artists and patrons to evoke the nature of sacred mysteries in visual terms. The rehang of The Sainsbury Wing brings to life the way artists forged a new way of painting, painting with a drama that no one had seen before and with stories flowing across panels in colourful scenes. These displays also promote a greater understanding of how works of art were, and still are, used as models of moral behaviour, as celebrations of the deeds of holy figures or as a plea for one’s hopes, both in this life and in the afterlife.

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