DARRELL A. CARPENAY
Darrell A. Carpenay( b. 1984, Georgetown, Guyana) is a photographer whose work demonstrates a sustained investment in documenting the landscapes, cultures, and contested futures of Guyana’ s Amazon region. In The Lost World, Mount Roraima series( 2019) he chronicles a rare expedition to the Guyanese base of Mount Roraima— an area so remote that few Guyanese, apart from Indigenous guides, have ever reached it. Located at the tri-border of Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela, Mount Roraima marks not only a geopolitical intersection but also a vital juncture in the territorial imagination of Amerindian peoples. For generations, it has functioned as a connective landscape that links communities across national boundaries through shared cosmologies, trade routes, kinship ties, and spiritual geographies.
Carpenay’ s photographs unsettle modern cartographic certainties, revealing that for many of Guyana’ s Indigenous communities, the Amazon is not a bounded territory but a lived geography. Guided by Akawaio-speaking community members from Kako Village, Carpenay’ s journey reflects a continuum of territorial guardianship. His images trace the arduous trek through highland rainforest, capturing moments of endurance, adaptation, and care. In one photograph, a warishi— a traditional Amerindian rucksack woven from nibbi plant fibers and reinforced with cane— rests along the trail. Used to carry cassava, fruits, and meat, the warishi becomes a vessel of embodied knowledge and ecological intimacy. These photographs offer more than a visual record; they illuminate the intimate, ongoing labor of cultural survival within ecologies increasingly threatened by contested borders.( GRACE ANEIZA ALI)
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