Depth of field: The photography of Sebastiao Salgado
Brazil's celebrated photojournalist and documentary photographer has spent a lifetime capturing the delicate balance between people and nature — and the consequences when this balance is lost.
Inspired by nature
Sebastiao Salgado and his wife Lelia Wanick Salgado pictured at the site of Instituto Terra, his conservation project in Minas Gerais, Brasil. Since the late 1990s, Salgado's photography work in books like "Genesis" has been complemented by his own massive reforestation project. It is another way of addressing the consequences of globalization that he documents in his powerful images.
Women in Zo'e village
Here Salgado captures the women in the Zo'e village of Towari Ypy who use "urucum" red fruit to color their bodies. The Zo'e are a tribe who were living isolated deep in the Amazon rainforests of north Brazil until discovered in the 1980s. The image also featured in Wim Wenders' 2014 documentary about Salgado, "The Salt of the Earth."
Grand perspectives
The photographer's signature black-and-white works are sometimes like landscape paintings. This photo from 2010 showcases the magisterial grandeur of the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, at the confluence of the Colorado and the Little Colorado rivers in Navajo Indian territory.
'Genesis'
Salgado spent eight years traveling for a photo essay project, titled "Genesis." Across 32 journeys in extreme regions, he captured pristine natural environments in his trademark chiaroscuro, black-and-white style. This image of sea birds was shown as part of the project's exhibition at C/O Berlin in 2015.
In harmony
Also from the "Genesis" series, here Salgado — who is also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Science in the US — captures Waura indigenous people fishing in Brazil's Lake Piulaga. The scene is located in the Mato Grosso region that is also threatened by deforestation.
Gold rush
In 1986, Salgado employed his masterly skills as a photojournalist to capture a modern day gold rush in the Serra Pelada mining region in northern Brazil, where many thousands of people descended out of blind hope to make their fortune. Here he captures conflict between mine workers and Brazilian military police amid the crazed, chaotic rush for gold.
Capturing the times
Back in 2008, Sagado's travelling exhibition "In Principio" included 60 images of coffee growers and harvesters around the world. The photographic journey, compiled between 2002 and 2007 in Brazil, India, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Colombia, imbued a faceless, daily cup of coffee with real lives and landscapes.