In the early months of this year, the Brazilian photographer Rafael Johann traveled to the north of Brazil, to visit and at the same time to improve his photography, at the huge environments of the Amazonian forest. His main intention was to register, through pinhole photography, the natural plasticity of the great forest, but to start his work he first had ‘to feel’ the environments that he was planning to photograph. In the following day after his arrival, he woke up early in the morning and went walking at the woods close to where he was staying, armed of a camera 35 mm with a color film ISO 100, for any eventuality. He entered the great forest slowly and started to ambient himself, to feel the dense atmosphere humid of that natural, vegetal and animal world. He heard, above his head, singings of some birds on the high of the great trees, the water racket in movement of some stream there by, and, he softly perceived some foliages lightened by morning solar rays. Those interesting "dancing" lights called his attention. He took his camera, looked at the viewfinder to fit something and had a good surprise: with the dense air humidity the camera’s objective condensed, transforming those reflexes in ethereal, full magic lights - in counterpoint with the darkness of the bushes - dancing to the flavor of a morning light. It looked as they were a group of spirits, guardians of the great forest that he was passing by. Rafael didn’t think about cleaning the objective and made some photographic shoots to register those brief and beautiful moments that he now presents us as the essay "Spirits of the Forest". Mario Bitt-Monteiro