SEBASTIAO SALGADO79
economics (he had a PhD), she was studying architecture; they were both members of a revolutionary left-wing group until they left the country as political persecution increased under the brutally repressive military dictatorship that ruled Brazil by fear and force for 20 years from 1964. If there is one thing he always believed
in, it was the importance and the value of the story – a belief that at times bordered on the magical, or at least the beyond- pedestrian – the duty he owed to a story. Whether it was war and famine across the Sahel where he worked with Médecins Sans Frontières, sharing the lives of people in the Mexican Sierra Madre, cataloguing manual labour from Azerbaijan to Poland, from Bangladesh to Rwanda and Sicily, to open cast mining in Para in Brazil, bearing witness to the upheaval of major movements of landless peasants across the world, he managed somehow to salvage some human dignity from the wrecking ball of history. All that unbridled passion – the work is so
assured and confident – clearly came from a mature, experienced hand. Over the years his consistency was one of the eerie things about him. But that all came at a price. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that at times, a mental and physical reaction to the horror of it all meant that this remarkable man considered giving it all up and becoming a simple farmer.
Living in self-imposed exile in Paris,
Salgado was almost 30 before he switched careers to photography, having borrowed Lélia’s camera, some time before she became director of the Magnum Gallery in Paris. His name stands in photojournalism’s pantheon, up there alongside Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Margaret Bourke-White, and Irving Penn. He covered hundreds of assignments in 130 countries, and is a significant part of the history of photojournalism itself. His archive approaches a million images. Salgado worked with the best agencies: Sygma, Gamma and, for 15 years, Magnum, which he left in 1994. Instantly recognisable, black and white images, dramatically lit, his work embodied the power of collective storytelling that Magnum embodies. A UNICEF goodwill ambassador,
Salgado won every prize imaginable, from the Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal to the Légion d’honneur in France; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Praemium Imperiale, the King of Spain International Journalism Award, the list is endless. For the past 30 years he was working to turn 17,000 acres into a nature reserve as part of the Mata Atlântica, a forest that extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil. For Salgado, human blindness leads to self-destruction, which was a cause for great pessimism. But nature, he said, continues on its own course and keeps evolving.
Memories are short, and history easily
forgotten. Intrepid, brave, driven, the Indiana Jones of the photographic world, Salgado ensured that the indigenous people of Latin America could not be ignored nor would they be forgotten.
Sebastião Salgado (below) died in May this year. Currently on show at les Franciscaines, and around the town until 4 January 2026 is an exhibition called Planches Contact’ a festival that aims to make Deauville a permanent venue for photography. Te event champions young photographers but also includes exhibits of major names like Cindy Sherman and Arno Minniken. A place that has an enduring relationship with images, that has always been a source of inspiration for artists, is today reasserting that spirit of contemporary creativity with a commitment to the future. Salgado would have approved.
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK / FOCUS PIX
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