Sebastião Salgado: 13 shocking photos that summarize the photographer's work

Sebastião Salgado (1944) is a Brazilian photographer based in Paris considered one of the two most talented photojournalists in the world. As a unique olhar, his documentary photograph of him many times promotes a social denouncement and gives to see disconcerted cenarios of the great public.

Sebastião traveled through more than 130 countries and carried out different projects. O Brasiliro began to photograph in 1973, almost 30 years old, as a self-taught person, as a social and humanitarian teacher.

1. Photo of the exploration of the mine in Serra Pelada, from the Gold series

A true human form, which portrays the image of the landscape of the Serra Pelada ore mine, not the State of Pará (municipality of Curionópolis). A major mine ao ceu aberto do mundo vinha being explored pela mineração com human conditions for workers.

Sebastião Salgado stayed for 33 days not local that had a mine 200 meters deep, registering two precarious workers every day. The photographs were captured in 1986 during this February.

Other photographers besides Sebastião Salgado have gone to Serra Pelada, but they produce pontuais works with a more journalistic work. Sebastião was a reporter who will be staying in the region for a longer time in order to gain insight into the local situation.

Before getting into the mine, the photographer had tempted six years before to carry out or work in the event of a military death, which did not authorize a visit. In spite of the images that have been published for eighty years, Sebastião chose to disclose this work to some extent in November 2019.

2. Photo of garimpeiros em serviço, da série Gold

O testemunho gives life to two garimpeiros in a precarious situation with little glasses of Sebastião Salgado generating very powerful images. Here we see huddled workers, sem any type of security, descending 200 meters below the level only through unsafe climbs made of wood.

O ouro na mine was uncovered in 1979 and, not the boom, a mineração chegou to give work to 50 thousand workers in terríveis conditions. Eles carregavam, as more and more to help the head, to the top and to the bottom, sacks with about 40 kilos of land to find some mixed uncertain ouro.

3. Daily photo of two miners, from the Gold series

Na imagem, in black and white, we see only the feições of a single worker, then all the others appear as a background showing the conditions of human workers in the mine.

His posture faces the iconography of Catholic religious figures, an approach that Sebastião Salgado attributed to his origin in Minas Gerais with a profound influence of Baroque aesthetics.

4. Photo of a worker from mineiro carregando um saco de terra, da série Gold

These are two few records with just one personagem from a series of photographs of two mine workers. Or homem, numa position of effort, carry a bag of terra nas coasts distributing or weight with a help of the head.

In the foreground we see um mão, from another colleague, an angle that stimulates the spectator to think in multiple possible readings: iria or colleague, help it? Would it be a sign that or colleague has passed through this situation and, because of isso, logo or pesadelo teria fim?

To exhibition Gold - Ouro Serra Pelada Mine It was inaugurated in São Paulo as curator of the photographer's wife - Lélia Wanick Salgado. There are 56 photographs exhibited (31 unpublished, as others have been released in a Taschen publication).

To show also passou through other destinations such as Stockholm, London, Fuenlabrada and Tallin. A series, what I live, draws an interesting provocation from the photographer who translated or what motivated him to do or work:

"Or what fear is that yellow and opaque metal that leads you to abandon your places, sell yourselves you belong and cross a continent to risk your life, you ossos and your health for um sonho? "

Sebastião Salgado

5. Photo of três trabalhadores rurais, da series Trabalhadores

Nessa photograph of three rural workers, or young people who appear in the foreground, sure a ferramenta de trabalho and we have clues of the precário cenário where or trade in the place.

A photograph of Sebastião Salgado tries to give dignity and force to the photographed years, a movement that seeks reveal or that move esses workers and understand your strength and resistance capacity.

In this image, there are two examples of the professional registration of collective life, of the worker as his colleagues who are not at work.

In the series that is included - Chamada Trabalhadores -, Sebastião Salgado escolheu registered people of our most varied trades, having common working conditions that are exhausting and hard.

A photo acima was chosen for Sebastião's capa do livro entitled Workers: an archeology of the Industrial Era (1996).

6. Photo of a local market, da série Trabalhadores

In the photograph we see a cheio market, with possibly precarious workers carrying baskets, almost all empty, on the head. No image center, with protagonism, is a boy, who should not be working.

With a panoramic view, the camera of Sebastião Salgado has managed to see more different contexts than with some kind of exploration of the worker.

A series portrays, for example, fishermen in the Sicilian region and garimpeiros in the enxofre mines in Indonesia. He also shows us the workers, the little work of Kuwait and the Brazilian indigenous atuantes, us the projects of construction of barragens.

7. Photo of operatives demonstrating, from the Trabalhadores series

Na imagem we see a series of rural workers, mostly homens, gathered in a kind of trade or protest. Eles erguem a symbolic ferramenta de labor do campo: a enxada. The workers occupy the entire field of vision of the photograph giving the idea of ​​a sea of ​​people.

Because he was an economist, Sebastião Salgado was able to learn differently about a working class, observing how the labor market was modified since the industrial revolution attached to two computers.

"These images, these photographs, are or records of an era - a kind of delicate archeology of a time that makes history the name of the Industrial Revolution"

Sebastião Salgado

8. Photo of duas mulheres imigrantes, da série Êxodos

Two women punished, hair time and hair fatigue, for as people escorted for the photograph of Sebastião Salgado. Little do we know about them, only that they are migrant workers from different gerações and that carry the physiognomy of an exaustão.

For be also an immigrant, who left Minas Gerais headed for France, where he was established, Sebastião Salgado says he has established a certain fulfillment as the photographed for the exodus project.

The people elected are anonymous people who need to leave their native land for a strong reason, being driven to a destiny, many times, unknown and uncertain.

The exhibition of exodus, which started in 2000, contained 300 images divided into five main themes (Africa, Luta pela Terra, Refugees and migrants, Megacities and Portraits of children). O livro da series was also launched in 2000.

9. Photo of a refugee camp, da série Êxodos

Refugees of African origin camped in precarious conditions, foi esse or portrait that Sebastião Salgado escolheu eternalize. We see the image of homens, women and children piled up in a vacant lot with basic sanitation and any access to hygiene and health.

Immigrants - many times refugees or exiles - frequently flee from war centers, environmental catastrophes or even from areas in economic crisis.

"In a disturbing story, few people left their native land for their own lives. Some know where I am from, confident that this is how my life awaits. Outras are simply on the run, relieved to be alive. Muitas won't be able to get to the place nenhum. "

Sebastião Salgado

For seven years, the Brazilian procured immigrants and fez photographic records in 40 countries - especially in large novelties marked by immigration.

10. Photo of três crianças, da série Êxodos

To image me an impressive record of three small, black children, on a common cover, barely shared the face to show.

OR olhar of each criança counted a unique expressividade e transmits to the viewer a different feeling. When the child is at the center, he is scared, the day is directly transparent, the exact feições and the skeleton race, the most interrogative spirit.

Ao falar two exiles, Sebastião Salgado separated a special session in which he tried to give voice exclusively to children, which ended up being collateral victims of these limiting situations.

Those who decide, for whatever reason, to leave: foi esse or issue escolhido em xodos to or resolve to argue about migrations on the planet. As an intuition of not leaving for no one that is involved in the migration process, Sebastian sublinhou or future dedicating an exclusive space to infância not his test.

11. Photo by uma geleira, da série Gênesis

A photograph of geleira num longinquo of the planet é uma great homage to nature feita by Sebastião Salgado. It is also an attempt to alert, from a home care girl to continue agressões to the environment.

“Genesis is about the primordial, on an untouched planet, its purest parts, and a traditional way of life that coexists in harmony with nature. I want that as people enxerguem or our planet in another way, feel like life and get closer to it. "

Sebastião Salgado

For eight years (between 2004 and 2012), the photojournalist portrayed 32 extreme regions of the planet focusing on the relationship between home and environment.

12. Photo by dois rios e da mata nativa, da série Gênesis

A photograph of kills and two rivers that cut to the forest show imposing nature and a rare cenário yet has not touched homem hair.

A ideia da series Gênesis saw it during the 90's, when the house of Sebastião and Lélia Salgado received the task of maintaining a family property where Sebastião was growing. The house is located not worth the Rio Doce, in Minas Gerais.

However, the childhood of the region was marked by the strong presence of nature, when Sebastião and Lélia returned to the terraces only to find dismantlement and an atmosphere in agony.

Foi gives wife the idea of ​​replanting more than 300 species of trees and trying to see how you are encouraged to go to the region.

"Depois de um tempo, we saw everything begin to be born de novo. We will return you, you insects, you bugs. Começou to turn life to all sides within the minha cabeça and, also, I saw the idea of ​​photographing or Genesis. I went to life, to what the most fabulous item on the planet. "

Sebastião Salgado

13. Photo of Indians sailing on the river, from the Gênesis series

In the three canoes cut across the river, one of them in the foreground, in a cloudy landscape, I found the outstanding natural elements (water through its reflection and or brightness of the moon). Here the Brazilian photographer demonstrates a harmonious integration between or homeme or meio.

A series Gênesis is a long-term initiative that aims to portray nature afora world: the landscapes of Amazônia, Patagônia, Ethiopia and Alaska. An idea is to register nature, not the apex, sublining the beauty of the world in which we live.

To show Gênesis, with 250 photographs curated by Lélia Wanick, I have toured a series of great cities of the world presenting unfamiliar memories for a large part of people.

The exhibition was divided into five sectors: Planeta Sul, Santuários da Natureza, Africa, or Grande Norte, Amazônia and Pantanal.

O project also from its origin to the documentary The salt of the earth (Or get out there), by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. Check out the official trailer:

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