Secreto Sarayaku is a book by Ecuadorian photographer Misha Vallejo. In it, he documents the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, a community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, exploring how their worldview and technology mediate their relation to their habitat. According to Vallejo, the book is “a subjective photographic reinterpretation of the ancestral Kichwa knowledge of the Kawsak Sacha or Living Forest.”

Kawsak Sacha -or Living Forest- is an amazonian worldview that affirms the sentient spirit and interconnectedness of the jungle; everything is alive in the jungle, and what affects one, affects all. Accordingly, the Kichwa take from the jungle only what is necessary for survival. They also believe that they are assisted in the protection of their homes by beings known as Sacha Runakuna. But contrary to what most people think when they think about indigenous communities in the Amazon, Sarayaku is a place transformed by modernity. Today, the community uses technology such as the internet to educate their people, expand their message of wildlife and land conservation, and even post the occasional meme.

What struck us most about the Sarayaku portrayed in Vallejo’s work is how influenced they are by the modern world. So, the mix between life in the jungle and technology became the core concept for the book design. For the cover, we hand-drew a school of catfish, which are ever-present in the book, digitalized and rendered them in 3D, surrounding the title as if they’re swimming around the letters. The color gradient is reminiscent of sunsets in the jungle, and very influenced by the colors of Vallejo’s pictures.

Vallejo showed us illustrations made by people in the community: a series of everyday animals and objects like monkeys, catfish, cellphones, and antennas. The illustrations were made using special pigments from Sarayaku, which Vallejo brought along and we used to play around, creating textures and shapes. As a secret touch, we translated the text in the book to binary code and hand wrote excerpts with the pigments, then added them to the book. To the naked eye, they resemble the face paintings and illustrations from the community, but it acts as a subtle nod on how the technology has crept into Sarayaku, influencing their communication and lifestyle.