The Lost Amazon
The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes
Wade Davis
Foreword by Andrew Weil
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| ‘A ravishing selection of photographs … a beautiful book – a haunting record of a lost world’ | | – The Times |
| ‘So enjoyable … worth buying for the pictures alone, but the text also offers an intriguing insight into a fascinating man’ | | – Geographical |
In 1941 Richard Evans Schultes took leave of Harvard University and disappeared into the north west Amazon of Colombia. Twelve years later, he returned having gone places no outsider had ever been, mapping uncharted rivers and living among two dozen Native American Indian tribes while collecting some thirty thousand botanical specimens, including two thousand novel medicinal plants and three hundred species new to science.
The greatest Amazonian botanical explorer of the twentieth century, Schultes was not only a living link to the great naturalists of the Victorian age but the world authority on toxic, medicinal and hallucinogenic plants.
Over the course of two decades, he took more than ten thousand images of plants, of landscapes, and of the indigenous peoples with whom he lived.The Lost Amazon is the first major publication to examine Richard Evans Schultes’s work through his photographs.
Among his collection are images of the hallucinogenic mushrooms known to the Aztec as Flesh of the Gods, and whose identification sparked the psychedelic era: there are also photos from the heart of the rain forest, a mantle of green that once stretched across entire continents. Most importantly, there are portraits of many peoples never before photographed, lovingly and respectfully captured in moments that reflect his deep relationships with them.
Schultes was made Director of the Botanical Museum at Harvard University, and he published more than four hundred scientific papers and numerous books before he died in 2001. His legacy, however, lives on in his photographs, revealing portraits of the people and places that make up this planet.
Also of interest:
Tree of Rivers: The Story of The Amazon
The Earth from the Air
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|  |  | | | | ISBN 0500285241 | | ISBN-13 978-0500285244 | | | | 28.0 x 28.0 cm | | Paperback with flaps | | 176pp | | With over 124 illustrations | | First published 2004 | | | | £18.95 | | | |  | | | | 
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