"The photographer that took the picture, José Carlos, has admitted that the tribe has, in fact, been known about since 1910. He created the hoax "in order to call attention to the dangers the logging industry may have on the group."
A set of photographs of the tribe were indeed published by msnbc.com and others in May 2008. However, the images above - which were made available to the media for the first time yesterday - are not the same photographs. A Survival International spokesperson has just confirmed to me that the images were taken in June 2010. For the sake of clarity and accuracy, I have therefore updated the title of this post to say Newly-released photos rather than New photos.
The controversy over the 2008 pictures was sparked by an article in The Observer headlined Secret of the "lost" tribe that wasn't. Later in 2008, Stephen Pritchard, that newspaper's readers' editor, wrote a follow-up piece in which he said the original article had misrepresented the situation.
If you read the source linked to in that article, the hoax wasn't that the tribe was uncontacted; it was that it was only just discovered. However, the fact that it's been known of for so long certainly does suggest that there has been at least some contact.