Biography

Sebastião Salgado is among the world’s foremost social documentary photographers. Salgado’s photographs transcend the common journalistic approach and imbue each image with a reverence for humanity that contradicts the prevailing shorthand of contemporary news photography. Using the captured image as his voice, Salgado articulates the inherent hardships and burdens suffered by the indigent and displaced peoples of the world. Through his photographs the artist exposes mythic misconceptions and delivers a message of dignity, humanity, and everyday heroism in their stead.

Born on a farm in Brazil, the only son among eight children, Salgado’s life has been marked by his ever-expanding interest in the economic struggles of the underprivileged. Trained as an economist, Salgado earned an M.A. from the University of São Paulo in 1968. After working two years at the Brazilian Ministry of Finance, he returned to school to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Paris. Following the completion of his doctorate, he took a position with the International Coffee Organization and worked in collaboration with other international interests to develop plantations in Africa. His experiences on the project led him to take up a camera as he realized for the first time the extent to which a country’s financial policies and environmental changes can affect its citizens. Looking at economics from a humanistic vantage point, Salgado began to use the camera to express his intellectual and emotional understanding of the hardships suffered by the African people. His commitment to the project eventually gave way to the beginnings of the first of many photographic series in which the constant struggles and sufferings of the destitute take center stage.

Over the past thirty years, Salgado has created an impressive oeuvre of personalized documentary photographs. Although he has gained much recognition for his more recent series, some of his most thought-provoking and poignant work dates back to the early days of his career. In Other Americas, a series published in 1986, Salgado turns his focus to the economic problems of his homeland and the surrounding countries. For seven years (1977–84) he traveled through the back regions of Latin America to photograph the native people. The resulting images, such as Brazil, 1983 (1983), taken during a great drought in Ceara, Brazil, investigate the notion that the indigenous people—though separated by distance, language, and beliefs—are ultimately bound by a common experience. Salgado blurs the physical boundaries of countries, making no distinctions between the people of Mexico or those living in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, or Brazil. Through powerful images he reinforces that the hardships faced by each group are interchangeable as they fight to maintain their independence, livelihood, and culture in the face of urban expansion and technological advancement. About the series he remarks, “The seven years spent making these images were a trip seven centuries back in time to observe, unrolling before me … all the flow of different cultures, so similar in their beliefs, losses, and sufferings.”1

Brazil, 1983 speaks clearly of the universal experience of the Latin American native people. Here, we see a photograph of three individuals, their mud-caked feet placed centrally in the frame. Isolated from their bodies, the feet provide an unconventional portrait. Rather than focusing on their identifying characteristics, the photograph acknowledges their commonalties, creating a vision of anonymity rather than a sense individuality. As a result, the workers represent the “everyman” of the indigenous culture. Their gnarled feet and unkempt nails testify to the difficulties of their experience as they work the land without the comfort and protection of thick-soled shoes. The image reinforces the idea that the indigenous people of Latin America remain largely untouched by modern civilization and lead difficult lives that are often defined by pain, dignity, hardship, and tragedy. —L.W.

1. Sebastião Salgado, “Preface,” Other Americas (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 10.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

---

Your current search criteria is: Artist is "Sebastião Salgado".