85 | 100 The dam break disaster in Brazil

Five years later, between 2019 and 2020, I spent months traveling along the Rio Doce with my producer, Stella Negraes, to document the extent and consequences of this disaster. At that time, we met Dona Delcina in Tumiritinga, a small town deep in the hinterland of Minas Gerais. We were traveling along the river in our rental car - the pandemic had just hit the big cities.

The 77-year-old welcomed us anyway - wearing masks and keeping her distance - and told us of her fate, which was as heartbreaking as that of all the other fifty or so victims we portrayed on our trip. During the rainy season, she collected water and stored it in plastic containers. The mining company did not recognize the former washerwoman as a victim of the dam burst, so she did not receive clean drinking water or any other assistance. Delcina was convinced that the drinking water was poisoned anyway, that the suppliers secretly filled up the bottles in the dirty river. She had to turn over every penny and earned some money by raising cockatiels. Nevertheless, the friendliness and openness with which Delcina let us into her life was both an incentive and an obligation for us to draw attention to the fate of these people. She patiently put up with me setting up my camera, flashes and tripod all over her house. And she implored us to make the situation on the river known here in Germany.

We made it to the Atlantic Ocean despite the rampant pandemic, where the mud continues to push its way to Bahia and Rio de Janeiro to this day. When we left for home, we knew that we would not see these dear people again for a long time - the pandemic is still raging in Brazil today. Why should we care about that here in Germany? The polluter, Samarco Mineração SA (a joint venture of two of the largest mining companies in the world: the Brazilian Vale SA and the Australian-British BHP Group) sells its iron ore all the way to Germany, for example to Thyssen-Krupp in Essen. This is because the mine has long been open again. The probability is high that a German passenger car contains iron ore from the Germano mine. And yet hardly anyone knows about the methods used to extract the ore in Brazil, because Samarco is waging an unprecedented cover-up campaign and exercising its barely limited power over the reparation money with dictatorial rigor.

For Delcina, the situation worsened after our departure: the scars she had shown us burst open and her skin peeled off extensively, because rainwater was too precious for her to shower, she used tap water from the Rio Doce for that. For weeks she wrestled with death, calling us frequently and telling us about her pain. The doctors, however, would not tell us what caused this illness. We learned about it from a journalist friend who was researching another disaster. In the meantime, Delcina is fortunately doing better, "it happens as God wills it," she says.

My plans for an exhibition this year were scuppered by the pandemic. Fortunately, the aid organization Misereor asked me to allow them to use my material from the Rio, and especially one of my portraits, for their nationwide advertising campaign. That was the solution: I can reach many more people with such a campaign than with an exhibition. So I was able to keep my promise to remind people of what happened six years ago at the Rio Doce.