My mission to photograph the Colombian Amazon began at the same moment as my exploration of the Hoosier National Forest, exactly one half century ago – though the former took that long to actually materialize.
Indeed, I’ve long said the estimated 10,000 photographs I have of my home state’s only national forest were mere practice for the 1,000-plus I captured with my Nikon D600 during a week on the world’s most biodiverse river environment in June 2024.
Traveling the country dba Steven C Imports between 1974 and 1976, my Amazon adventure began in seaside Cartagena. In May of that first year, I made the first of six trips through one of the world’s most biodiverse countries — from the the Caribbean Coastal cities Barranquilla, Santa Marta, and Cartegena; to the Coastal Lowlands arts and crafts center San Jacinto; to the Andean cities Bucaramanga and Bogotá — in pursuit of handwoven cotton wall hangings and other handcrafted items for export to the U.S.
In the capital Bogotá, more than 8,000 feet above the Amazon Basin, my artist wife Judy and I purchased some 125 Amazon Indian baskets for shipment to Bloomington. When they arrived, we began planning a trip to Leticia, Colombia’s only port on the Amazon.
I had visions of shooting for National Geographic someday and had developed a fascination about the river from articles and photo spreads the magazine published in the early 1970s — especially the photo spreads.
1976, the year Pablo Escobar rose to cocaine power, was no time for a hippie adventurer from a major Midwest Colombian marijuana distribution center to be running back and forth to the source of all that contraband. On our last trip, DEA and Colombian agents informally questioned us upon our red-eye arrival at an empty Miami International and formally interrogated and frisked us in airport backrooms in Bogotá and Miami upon our return.
I was having the adventure of my 25-year-old life, not looking to get rich or smuggle drugs. I was a mid-level pot dealer, using my essentially free money to enjoy an ascetic, Thoreauvian lifestyle at home and experience a small, exotic piece of the planet some 2,000 miles away on another continent.
Judy was a small town Indiana homecoming queen, for god’s sake, not an international drug smuggler.
Our innocence notwithstanding, in mid-70s Colombia you didn’t have to be doing anything to get extorted and lose everything or, shudder, cost your family a fortune to save your dumb ass. I was once warned on a bus in Barranquilla to not hang my arm out the window for risk of losing my fingers for my silver ring. Exaggerated as I’m sure that admonition was, message received. My first Colombian adventure came to an end in May 1976, almost two years to the day from the moment it began.
But the dream of photographing and exploring the Colombian Amazon remained latent yet omnipresent, while I spent a half century directing most of my photographic and journalistic energies to the closest thing Southern Indiana has to a jungle — the Hoosier National Forest.
That was until my family and I arrived in Leticia on June 15, 2024, to spend time with the Ticuna Indians.
THE JOURNEY IN WORDS
Hoosier National Forest, Half Century Detour to the Amazon Rainforest
To the Amazon River: Plan Colombia, Part 1 — Wall Hangings and Cartegena
To the Amazon River: Plan Colombia, Part 2 – San Jacinto, Barranquilla, B&W Photography
To the Amazon River: Plan Colombia, Part 3 — Hilario, Barrio Simon Bolivar,
Bucaramanga, Bogotá, High Fashion Leather and Amazon Basketry
Pursuing the Dream of Leticia, Colombia
— and the Ticuna Indians
Lunch in Santa Rosa, Peru — Or is it Colombia?
Sunset on the Amazon River: Tabatinga, Brazil; Mirador Komara
THE JOURNEY IN IMAGES
BRAZIL: Amazon River Sunset; Tabatinga, Brazil; Mirador Komara
PERU: Santa Rosa, Amazon River
