‘The Song of Invisible Birds’ explores the violent pressures facing Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in the Peruvian Amazon. Refusing to photograph those who have chosen not to be seen, Florence Goupil instead traces the lands, signs and surrounding communities shaped by their presence.

The Peruvian Amazon is not only a forest. It is also the home and refuge of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. In Peru, 25 distinct groups, more than 7,000 people, have chosen to remain apart from the outside world. For centuries, these nomadic peoples have fled colonisation, enslavement and the violence of the rubber boom, retreating deeper into the forest to preserve a way of life bound to the biodiversity on which they depend.

Since 2023, a political campaign has sought to deny their existence and open the way for legal and illegal extraction of gas, oil and timber within their territories. They continue to ask not to be contacted, photographed or seen. For this reason, Goupil has not photographed them.

Instead, she has walked the lands through which they move, traced footprints in riverbeds exposed by drought, followed arrows left behind in settled communities, and spoken with people in initial contact and others who have had brief but profound encounters with them. Combining image and sound, ‘The Song of Invisible Birds’ explores the fraught coexistence between isolated peoples, extractive industries and the neighbouring communities caught in between.

Artist Bio

Florence Goupil is a French-Peruvian documentary photographer based in Peru. Through a multimedia approach, her work explores the intersections of ethnobotany, environmental and human rights, and the living memory of Indigenous communities.

She is a National Geographic Explorer and contributor, a Pulitzer Center grantee and a 2024–25 Magnum Foundation Fellow. She has received major international recognition, including the PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant, the POY Latam award for Ibero-American Photographer of the Year and the Nouvelles Écritures Award from La Gacilly Photo Festival. Her work has been exhibited internationally and published in titles including The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Atmos and British Journal of Photography.