Profile: Sebastião Salgado

Oil well, Burhan, Kuwait - Image By Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado is arguably, one of the most successful contemporary photojournalists of recent years with accolades and awards for his projects stretching back over twenty five years. His photographic work reflects his deep humanist feelings towards his subjects, many of whom are from very poor backgrounds trying to scratch a living in a tough and unforgiving world.

Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944 in Aimorés, Minas Gerais,Brazil and studied economics before moving to Paris where he completed a Ph.D. in economics and was employed as an economist for International Coffee Organization until 1973. During a trip to Africa, Salgado borrowed his wife's camera and it was after this period that Salgado decided to go into photography, first joining the Sygma agency (1973-74) and then going to Gamma (1975-79). He later joined the Magnum photo agency in 1979 but left in 1994 due to his unhappiness with the way his work was being used/sold. After leaving Magnum Salgado launched his own photo agency called Amazonas Images which currently represents Salgado and his work.

Salgado used Paris as his base to cover various stories around the world including the wars in Angola, the Spanish Sahara and the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan -the revenue from the image sales of the last story helped Salgado fund his photographic projects. For seven years between 1977 and 1984, Sebastião Salgado roamed Latin America photographing remote mountainous villages and peasant cultures of Indians and their descendants in Mexico and Brazil. The resulting images were used in a book and exhibition called Other Americas.

His next large scale project was called Workers which took five years to create. Many of Salgado's best known images come from this project where he photographed, in over twenty five countries , the end of large scale labour. Very few photographers, these days, have completed works on such large scales but even more amazing are the powerful images, that reflect the bleak and miserable existence for many workers during that period. Many of the photographs look at industries that employed vast numbers of men to do back breaking work; the sheer numbers of men in some of the Brazil gold mine images is just staggering. Further projects after Workers included photography about migration and the plight of displaced persons, refugees and migrants in over 40 countries. The success of Salgado's work is down to the quality of the images and his pragmatic ability to be able to show his work outside of the usual photojournalistic areas; he is certainly not afraid to exhibit and be called an artist which can make some photojournalists start to froth at the mouth! In an era when the human interest story is sidelined for the constant demand for celebrity images, Sebastião Salgado has managed to keep a small traditional sector of photojournalism alive and well....at least on a small scale.

Various charities and aid organisations have benefited from Sebastião Salgado's photography over the years including Doctors without Borders and the United Nations, where the photographer documented the UN's fight against Polio in Africa and India. The photographs looked at the daily struggle against polio with a background of conflict and cultural considerations, continuing to complicate further the immensely important task of inoculation. The strength of Salgado's work comes from its sympathetic look at the subject, while informing the viewer about the issues involved. Salgado never looks down on his subject matter- if anything he is a motivator for social change, using images to get across what is happening in the world. I've loved his work since i first saw some of his images in the mid 1980's. The fantastic use of light in his images is just one outstanding feature of his work; the complete package of style and message is a powerful element to Salgado's work. Hopefully this great photographer will continue to produce his powerful and thought provoking images for many years to come.

All Images by Sebastião Salgado

• Top left - Sebastião Salgado
• Middle left - Refugee from Gondan, Mali, 1985
• Middle right - Gold mine, Serra Pelada in the federal state of Pará, Brazil
• Bottom left - Sahel - The End of the Road
  

Links

• Masters of Fine Art photography - Sebastião Salgado
  
• Time Special - Sebastião Salgado
  
• Guardian.co.uk - Southern Sudan images
  
• NY Times: Brazil's Landless Movement
  
• Children of war: photographs by Sebastião Salgado
  
• terra.com/Sebastião Salgado

Broad selection

The boats on the Norfolk Broads at Wroxham, Norfolk, UK

I can' remember the last time i was at Wroxham and the sun was shining. The last few visits have always been during either rain or dull overcast skies, but regardless of what the weather is like, Wroxham is always a fun place to visit.

It is getting close to the 2008 Norfolk visit and I've been thinking about what film to take with me. Last year, i posted an article about how I was going to use a broader mix of films in 2008 - i still intend to follow that plan. I'm going to stick my neck out, hope that the British summer weather is sunny and bright (yeah right!), and take 125asa and 50asa as the main stock. I will also take some Ilford HP5 400asa (a standard film of mine anyway) just in case the weather isn't that good.

One format i intend to shoot more of this year is medium format 120 in 6x4.5 & 6x6 formats. I do enjoy using these types of cameras and the image quality is just superb. Other than that it will be the usual mixed bag of digital, 35mm film and medium format.

Northern Prince

Here's another image of the Northern Prince - featured in a post last week. I just love the light quality in this image...the pinks and purples are just gorgeous.

Bottle tops

This is the final post of the colour week series. I was rather surprised to see that only three of the images posted were from digital sources - and i picked the photographs!

I still use colour film, although mainly in 120 roll formats rather than 35mm. The rest of my colour work is done digitally and it is digital that, i believe, has made me view colour image making in a new light. I was never a big fan of colour during my student days but now it accounts for a good proportion of my work. Digital just makes colour photography so much easier.

The image above was taken in the studio as just a bit of fun but i like how it's turned out. The warm light was shining onto the beer bottle caps from a nearby window. The lens was a Nikkor 55mm macro lens which is one of my favourite lenses for studio work.

Plane and simple

A Cessna taxiing back to parking

Someone once asked me why i took photographs. It was a difficult question to answer, and at the time i wasn't able to give a good reply. After some thought, i realised that i take photographs out of curiosity; it's a process of trying to understand what i see around me. It is also a way of expressing myself artistically. And finally, a camera is something i can psychologically hide behind, away from the world and everyone.

In some respects i am being judgemental about things i see, but most of the time i am trying to get a message, event or story across. I am a witness, storyteller and artist all rolled into one but there is also an element of luck. Sometimes i capture or miss a picture due to one thing or another which often makes me think ' was i destined to get (or not) this image?'.

Last year, i saw a brilliant image of a Catholic cardinal in full costume, engrossed in a conversation on his mobile phone, walking down an old Norfolk village street. Unfortunately i was in the car and couldn't get the shot but the resulting image, if i could have shot it, would have been superb.

Big wheel

Blue sky and a fairground wheel. I waited for the bird to come into the shot, just to add an extra bit of detail to the image. The gull was using the sea breeze to glide about, and looked like he hadn't got a care in the world.

Sudden change

The images coming from the earthquake zone in China's Sichuan Province have been traumatic to look at but this series of images really took my breath away.

One minute you are photographing a couple's wedding, and the next you are in the middle of a major earthquake. It is just amazing that the photographer and guests all survived the incident. To have the presence of mind to continue taking pictures, while the terrifying earthquake occurs for three minutes, is even more remarkable.

You can view this remarkable set of images HERE

The rising waters

During a flood in York

This is another shot taken on slide film using the Bronica ETRS. It was taken during one of York's many small floods that affected areas down by the river. I'm not sure about the date but i think it could be around October 2000, when North Yorkshire received a massive amount of water over the space of a couple of weeks.

Certain local towns like Malton and Norton, had some of the worse flooding the town had ever experienced with millions of pounds worth of damage caused to businesses and housing by rising river levels. Soon afterwards, a large scale flood defence system was built costing millions of pounds.