Sebastião Salgado

Photographer and humanitarian

• Born: February 8, 1944
• Birthplace: Aimorés, Brazil

Education: São Paulo University

Significance: Through his photography, Sebastião Salgado documented global struggles including poverty, displacement, natural disasters, labor exploitation, and deforestation. His work has helped raise awareness, compassion, and assistance for many charitable causes.

Background

Sebastião Salgado was born in Aimorés, Brazil, on February 8, 1944. His family operated a small-town cattle ranching operation but hoped that Salgado could find a more prestigious career. The young Salgado attended the first years of secondary school in his hometown but had to move to the distant town of Vitoria, which had better academic facilities, to complete his secondary education. He took an interest in economics and enrolled in São Paulo University. Salgado earned his master's degree in economics in 1968.

In 1969, Salgado moved to Paris to continue his studies. He pursued a doctorate in economics. Two years later, he moved to London. There, Salgado joined the International Coffee Organization, a group that monitors the production and sale of coffee, as an economist. Salgado's tasks involved making regular trips to coffee-exporting countries to research their financial situations.

During trips to Africa, Salgado began snapping photographs of the people and places he visited. Many of the pictures portrayed people working long hours at difficult tasks for little reward. Salgado began to question his job as an economist and think more about the value of photography for documenting the harsh realities of many people's lives. Ultimately, Salgado resigned from the International Coffee Organization and decided to pursue a career in photography.

Life's Work

Salgado returned to Paris in 1973 and began taking freelance assignments in photography. During this time, he improved his techniques and equipment and experimented with new styles and approaches. His photographs gained some attention, and starting in 1974, he found steady work with French photographic agencies Sygma and Gamma. Salgado's assignments took him to many parts of Europe, Africa, and South America. There, he came face-to-face with more poignant scenes of real people living under challenging conditions.

Salgado's work assignments usually involved taking photographs to support specific news items. During his travels, however, he envisioned a larger body of work—great books of photographs chronicling the lives of people in little-seen areas of the world. In 1979, while working for the Magnum agency, Salgado finished his first book of photography, Other Americas. In this work, he captured dozens of images of Latin American native and peasant people engaged in their everyday tasks. The book was published in Europe and the United States in 1986 and won acclaim for its power to convey emotion and build respect, understanding, and compassion for disenfranchised cultures.

In 1984, Salgado embarked on a mission for Doctors Without Borders, an organization that provides humanitarian aid to many countries in need. Salgado was tasked with creating a photographic record of a major famine taking place in much of Africa. He published many of his photographs in two books, Sahel: Man in Distress and Sahel: The End of the Road, and exhibited other pictures in galleries. Salgado's work helped raise awareness of Doctors Without Borders and support for its charitable work.

Salgado spent the last half of the 1980s working on the massive project of photographically documenting the state of modern industrial labor in many countries. The pictures he took, many of which showed the working poor toiling at dangerous and difficult jobs for low wages, filled traveling exhibitions and a new book titled Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age. This project, focused on the decline of industry in the technological era, became one of his most popular and won him international acclaim. His wife did much to help with the organization and presentation of his work.

The success of Workers inspired Salgado to undertake another lengthy mission in 1993, this time photographing people on every inhabited continent who had left their traditional rural roots to seek work in cities. The main books and exhibitions resulting from this work, called Migrations and Portraits of Children of the Migration, appeared in galleries, cultural centers, and bookstores across the world. Salgado arranged for educational resources and programs to occur with the exhibitions to try to teach viewers the reality behind the stark images.

In 1994, Salgado and his wife formed their own photographic partnership, Amazonas Images. The main goal of Amazonas was to promote Salgado's projects, particularly in efforts to raise awareness and funding for the preservation of a small area of Brazilian rain forest. The Salgados and their supporters established the Instituto Terra, a group that replants trees, creates educational resources, and lobbies for protections for the forest, which had been seriously threatened by logging and industrialization.

Some of Salgado's insights into the often-disastrous effects of human activity on wildlife and landscapes contributed to the Genesis collection in 2013. Meanwhile, Salgado continued to travel the world, photographing and documenting thousands of seldom-represented peoples and places.

Impact

Salgado has made important contributions and gained acclaim both as an artist and a humanitarian. He has earned many awards, degrees, and even an ambassadorship with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Salgado is an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and a two-time International Center of Photography photographer of the year. He was also featured in a 2014 documentary film, The Salt of the Earth. His work has helped millions of people learn about global cultures, especially those experiencing poverty, displacement, natural disasters, and other struggles. He was instrumental in efforts to restore and preserve threatened rain forests in Brazil.

Personal Life

Salgado married Lélia Deluiz Wanick in 1967, and the two partnered on many of his photographic exhibitions and publishing projects. They had two sons, Juliano and Rodrigo.

Principal Works

Nonfiction

Other Americas, 1986

Sahel: Man in Distress, 1986

Sahel: The End of the Road, 1988

Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, 1993

Migrations, 2000

Portraits of Children of the Migration, 2000

Africa, 2007

Genesis, 2013

Bibliography

"Biography: Sebastião Salgado." Guardian, 11 Sept. 2004, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/sep/11/sebastiaosalgado.photography2. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

McDonald, Michele. "When People's Suffering is Portrayed as Art." Nieman Reports, 15 March 2005, niemanreports.org/articles/when-peoples-suffering-is-portrayed-as-art/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

Nair, Parvati. A Different Light: The Photography of Sebastião Salgado. Duke UP, 2011.

"Sebastião Salgado." International Center of Photography, 2017, www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/sebastião-salgado?all/all/all/all/0. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

"Sebastião Salgado." Polka Galerie, 2013, www.polkagalerie.com/en/sebastiao-salgado-biography.htm. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

"Sebastião Salgado." Sundaram Tagore Gallery, www.sundaramtagore.com/artists/sebastiao-salgado/featured-works?view=slider#6. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

"Sebastião Salgado." Yancey Richardson Gallery, www.yanceyrichardson.com/artists/sebastiao-salgado. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.

"UNICEF Special Representative Sebastião Salgado." UNICEF, www.unicef.org/salgado/bio.htm. Accessed 11 Oct. 2017.