Musuk Nolte: The Belongings of the Air

In “The Belongings of the Air”, photographer Musuk Nolte journeys into the Peruvian Amazon to explore the struggles and spiritual resilience of indigenous communities. As part of a long-term documentary project, this series captures his encounter with the Shawi people of the Paranapura river basin and his initiation into an ayahuasca ceremony guided by Julio, a local shaman. During this profound inner voyage, Nolte describes himself as dreaming with his eyes open—entering another dimension where the visible and the invisible converge.

The project becomes a reflection on how to represent the unrepresentable. Through a visual language that blends documentary precision with auteur experimentation, Nolte redefines his role—not just as an observer, but as a participant engaging with indigenous epistemologies. The spiritual journey he documents is inseparable from the social and political urgency of preserving indigenous knowledge systems threatened by environmental destruction and globalisation.

His photographs unfold like an atlas of visions, forming a sensorial narrative that echoes the Shawi cosmovision. They challenge the Western framework that has dominated Latin America’s cultural logic and offer an alternative: the individual as part of an interconnected whole. “The Belongings of the Air” asks us to confront competing worldviews and imagine a future where they might coexist.