The audacious Henry Ford, then the richest man in the world, built an American town in the middle of the Amazon in 1928 that was supposed to be a rubber plantation for his tires and car parts. It was a 10,000-square-kilometre disaster, despite the cute houses, square dances and company cars. Photographer Dan Dubowitz’s photo art of abandoned Fordlandia is part of the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto, at Bau-Xi Photo. (Above: Brazilian manager’s houses, archival pigment print)
Ford never visited the outpost and had no idea how to run a horticultural project. Rubber was harvested improperly and both the Americans and Brazilians experienced severe cultural problems. Workers staged a revolt that had to be quelled by the army. By 1945, the town had been sold and abandoned.