We Will All Die One Day (2020-2021)
The COVID-19 pandemic marked one of the darkest chapters in Brazil’s history, claiming over 700,000 lives and exposing deep structural inequalities. Already reeling from a prolonged economic crisis, the country’s overcrowded urban slums and fragile healthcare system accelerated the virus’s devastating spread.
Manaus, deep in the Amazon, became a symbol of collapse—where hospitals ran out of oxygen, public services failed, and the dead outnumbered the living. The federal response, led by then-president Jair Bolsonaro, was defined by denial, disinformation, and opposition to vaccines and public health measures. Downplaying the crisis, Bolsonaro infamously declared, “We will all die one day.”
This series presents a selection of photographs made during Brazil’s COVID-19 emergency between 2020 and 2021.
An exhausted nurse inside the ICU of the Lagoa-Barra field hospital in Rio de Janeiro, 2020.
The intensive care unit of the Gilberto Novaes field hospital, set up in Manaus to treat Covid-19 patients during the 2020 outbreak.
Cristina Pereira, experiencing homelessness, lives in a makeshift shelter beneath a bridge in downtown São Paulo. 2020.
Doctors prepare a 58-year-old COVID-19 patient for ECMO therapy in the ICU of Morumbi Albert Einstein Hospital, São Paulo. 2021.
Emergency workers transfer 90-year-old Clovis Rodrigues Vieira to a hospital in Manaus during the second COVID-19 wave in 2021.
A relative mourns an 81-year-old woman who died of Covid-19 at home in Manaus, where deaths surged amid the 2020 collapse of the Amazonas health system.
Easter mass streamed online from São Francisco de Assis Church in São Paulo, as churches remain closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020.
SOS Funeral workers remove the body of a 72-year-old COVID-19 victim during Manaus’s 2021 second wave, when the health system collapsed.
A relative mourns during a mass burial in one of the mass graves for COVID-19 victims at Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus, 2020.
A young girl stands outside her home in Portelinha, one of São Paulo’s poorest communities, as her mother waits in line for food aid during the pandemic. 2020.
Portelinha residents wait for food aid during the 2020 lockdown, which deepened poverty in vulnerable communities.
Carboxi workers in Manaus collect oxygen tanks from families of Covid-19 patients after hours-long waits during the 2021 crisis.
Gravediggers carry coffins into a mass grave at Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus, where burials tripled during the COVID-19 outbreak. 2020.
Mass grave site at Parque Tarumã cemetery, where many of Manaus’s first COVID-19 victims were buried. 2021.