 |
| Serra Pelada, State of Para, Brazil, 1986 |
Following his studies at São Paulo University in Brazil and at Vanderbilt University in the United States, Sebastião Salgado worked with the International Coffee Organization for which he traveled extensively. It is during these trips that he started taking pictures, and in 1973, he left his job to begin a career in photography. He has never stopped travelling since. He partnered with photo agencies such as Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos up until 1994, at which point he and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, founded the Amazonas Images agency.
His projects are conceived and created as long-term endeavors, and presented in exhibitions and books which are characterized by a strong visual coherence. From 1977 to 1984, Salgado journeyed through Latin America and visited its most remote mountain villages. The resulting photographs were published in Otras Americas in 1986. Salgado began another extensive project that same year examining the global production system, and for which he traveled to twenty-six countries. His goal was to reveal and explain the evolution of manual labor. Published under the French title “La main de l’homme”, the book Workers was released in 1993.
In 1994, Salgado started focusing on the constant increase in human migration caused by political events. Throughout the rest of the decade, he published thirty-six stories on this serious topic. He assembled them in Migration, published in 2000 along with The Children, which highlighted the plight of the youngest of these refugees.
His photo essays have been largely rewarded. For instance, he received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in Humanistic Photography in 1982, a World Press Photo in 1985, and a Visa d'Or at the Visa pour l'Image festival in 1990.
Salgado's commitment goes beyond his photographs. In 1998, he successfully converted the land he had inherited from his family in Brazil into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra, whose aim is to replenish the country's depleted Atlantic forest. Furthermore, having collaborated with Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization on numerous occasions, he was named a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 2001.
Since 2004, Salgado has been working on a new monumental project entitled Genesis; a collection of black and white photographs of landscapes, fauna, flora, and communities who still live according to ancestral ways and traditions.
 | ||
| Serra Pelada, State of Para, Brazil, 1986 |
More about the exhibition: HERE
12, rue Saint-Gilles
75003 Paris, France
No comments:
Post a Comment