Photos of Fordlandia

Henry Ford built Fordlandia, a prefabricated industrial town in the middle of the Brazilian jungle, in 1928. Its sole aim - which it never really achieved - was to provide the Ford motor company with a plentiful supply of rubber, helping them avoid the presumably higher prices of the rubber which came from the then-British colony of Malay. At the time, without synthetic rubber, the only way to get rubber for car tyres was to grow it. Sadly the rubber plantations ran into all sorts of problems (read about them here and here), and the Detroit-in-the-Jungle never really took off. The invention of synthetic rubber in 1945 made the whole thing even more poignantly pointless.

Much the same as he'd done back in Detroit, Ford built places for his workers to live, hospitals and places to socialise in, and kept a close close eye on the place (no smoking, women or drinking, even in private quarters).

The first photos (the 'then') are from the 1920s and 1930s, and as well as showing glimpses of early Fordlandia they're a lot about early industrialisation, labour & leisure, the effect of industrialisation on the landscape, the first stirrings of globalisation and definitely some sort of colonial-industrial mentality.

The second photos (the 'now) are by photographer Scott Chandler, and it's always nice to see images of buildings being reclaimed by the land. Oddly creeply, but nice. Enjoy.