Photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s photographer’s unforgettable image of worker exploitation, environmental damage and human rights violations has received widespread praise.
His death was announced Friday by the Terra Institute, an organization he co-founded with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado. this New York Times The report said he had health problems since he suffered from malaria in the 1990s.
Salgado is considered one of the most popular photographers working today. From the Sahel Desert to the Amazon rainforest to the farthest world in the Arctic, his lush black and white photos seem to be taken from every corner of the world. Salgado brings his camera to places many hear but rarely seen, providing the world with an irrefutable glimpse of all the horrors humans unleash on Earth.
He uses his images to tell the truth about the attractions he has observed in his long tradition of documentary photography. But while many documentary photographers and photojournalists claim to remain objectivity, Salgado approaches his subject, having a long conversation with people who pass in front of the camera and wait for a long time to get the right shot.
“What makes Salgado’s image different from this work is his engagement relationship with his subject, a product of his life’s commitment to social justice,” wrote critic David Levi Levi-Strauss. Artforum. “For example, within the scope of Salgado’s reporting, it is impossible to protect our emotional statics, allowing us to get rid of photos of other hungry characters, such as their exploitative, rude and sensuality.”
His photos have been widely published in the media and are the subject of countless photos. For someone who can be labeled as a photojournalist, Salgado was also organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1991, which is unusual.
Not all critics praised Salgado for being repeatedly accused of exploiting his subjects. The allegations even surfaced last year when Salgado’s “Amazônia” photos featured shots of Amazonians. this guardian Quote Yé’páMahsã anthropologist João Paulo Barreto, who recalls walking out of the show: “To me, it feels like a violent portrayal of the indigenous human body. I mean, would Europeans ever go and show their mother’s body, in this way, the body of their mother, the child?”
Even Salgado fans tend to doubt his photography. Weston Naef was then a curator of Getty Center New York Times Magazine In 1991, “One problem for myself is that Salgado is not sometimes exploiting his subjects rather than helping his subjects.”
However, Salgado seemed to know that his image could not be divorced. He once said, “You take photos with all your ideology.” He often directs the money he gets from his image sale to the community being photographed. 1991 New York Times Magazine The work says he recently used the funds to fund artificial LIMB plants in Cambodia.
His breakthrough was his 1984 book Autres Ameriques (Other Americas), it is specifically used in Latin American farmers. The series began in 1977 and was the first work he completed in South America since fleeing Paris’s native Brazil in clues from the country’s military government, and it aims to showcase the poor communities in the region and their plight.
He told the seven centuries that it took seven years, like a seven-century observation, unfolding before me… all the flows of different cultures, their beliefs, losses and pains are so similar. ” Independent In 2015. “I decided to sneak into this Latin America’s most concrete unrealistic, so mysterious and miserable, so heroic and noble.”
The series, along with a follow-up to victims of famine in the Sahel desert in Africa, has gained a loyal following in Europe. Americans seem to have had a tough time on these photos. Salgado recalls that even if thousands of books were sold abroad, U.S. aid groups would not publish photos of the Sahel in the United States. By the 90s, many Americans knew him only because of one of his few breakthrough news photos: John W. Hinckley Jr.
Sebastiao Salgado was born on February 8, 1944 in Aimorés, a small town in Minas Gerais State, Brazil. His father was a cattle herder and wanted Salgado to become a lawyer, who initially set out to fulfill his wishes. But when he finally attended the University of São Paulo, Salgado studied economics. He continued to work for the Brazilian Ministry of Finance.
He married his wife in 1967 with his wife Lelia Wanick Salgado. He later worked for the International Coffee Organization in London.
His work brought him around the world, and he went with him to his pentax camera. A trip to Africa in 1971 convinced him that photography was “the way to get into reality.”
When he regularly published early photos in magazines, he didn’t get much more attention until the 1980s. publishing Autres Ameriques Seeing his followers with great growth and taking pictures of his workers at the Serra Pelada Gold Mine in Brazil.
In the new millennium, Salgado’s work has been increasingly focused on climate change and ecological barriers. His series Genesis (2004–11) offers beautiful shots of people from glaciers, mountains and arid landscapes.
Salgado tells aperture. “There are many groups that have never contacted anyone with anyone. They are the same as us. There is still a certain proportion of the planet in Genesis state.” Later, he would say that through the series, he “turned into an environmentalist.”
From the Museum of Modern Art to Tate Modern’s institutions, Salgado’s works are extensively collected. He has received many acclaim outside the art world: He is a goodwill ambassador to UNICEF, and he has received numerous support for his work in supporting the environment, including forest restoration work with his wife in Brazil.
He doesn’t seem to care whether he will be remembered. Speech al-Monitor Last year, he refuted the idea that he was an artist, saying he was a “photographer” and mentioned that his photos should be his legacy. “I have no worries or conceits about how to be remembered,” he said. “Photos are my life, nothing else.”
