France: Sebastião Salgado Amazônia

 

© Sebastiao Salgado

May 20 - October 31, 2021

For seven years, Sebastião Salgado immersed himself in far corners of the Brazilian Amazon, photographing the forest, rivers and mountains, and the people who live there. On his journeys deep into this realm—where the immense power of nature can be felt as in few places on earth—his photographer’s eye captured striking images, most being shown here to the public for the first time.

Accompanied by an original soundtrack—a ‘symphony-world’ created by Jean-Michel Jarre using concrete sounds from the forest—the exhibition also gives voice to the indigenous communities photographed, via their testimonies.

 

A photographic journey 

Following from his Genesis project, a photographic ode to the majestic beauty of the most remote regions of the world, Salgado embarked on a new series of expeditions to capture the incredible natural diversity of the Brazilian rainforest, and the ways of life of its inhabitants. Staying in remote villages for several weeks at a time, he was able to photograph ten ethic groups. Taken from small watercraft or from the air, Salgado’s images reveal the complex maze of tributaries that twist their way into the river, mountains reaching heights of 3 000 metres, and the skies so thick with moisture that there are rivers in the air.

A symphony-world 

The exhibition highlights not only the fragility of this ecosystem, but also the rich natural soundtrack of the Amazon, placing in dialogue Salgado’s arresting photos and a new musical composition by Jean-Michel Jarre, created specially for the exhibition using concrete sounds from the forest. The rustling of trees, animal calls, birdsong, the roar of water tumbling from mountain peaks, etc. collected in situ, in the rainforest, form a stunningly apt audio landscape to accompany Salgado’s journey. 

An inestimable heritage

Featuring 200 photographs, along with giant projections—scaled to the immensity of a natural realm like no other—the exhibition shines a spotlight on the fragility of the Amazonian ecosystem. It seeks to show that in the areas inhabited by indigenous groups, the ancestral guardians of these lands, the forest remains almost entirely undamaged. Documentary films allow visitors to hear from the people who live in the forest, in their own voices, and to gain a sense of their rich cultures. Through these powerful images, Sebastião and Lélia Salgado hope to prompt the thinking and actions urgently needed to protect this inestimable heritage of humanity.

Curator and scenographer: Lélia Wanick-Salgado 

Original musical soundtrack for the exhibition: Jean-Michel Jarre 

Exhibition in collaboration with the Geneva Ethnography Museum

 

More information: HERE

France: Sebastiao Salgado at Polka Galerie

January 31 - March 14, 2020

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

Film: The Salt of the Earth

 

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history ; international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes : a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Sebastião's Salgado's  life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

 

All about the film