“I photographed the world”, Sebastião Salgado once said. And we could add that he photographed the world from the perspective of those at it’s “periphery”, from the vantage point of its exploited and marginal territories, its labourers, its poor, its refugees, its indigenous, its children, and finally, from “nature” itself, endeavouring always to become a part of those he photographed, for as he would also, to be a photographer was a way of life, of sharing lives, of being with those he photographed. (The Guardian, 08/02/2024)
The vastness and density of his work makes any selection of presumably representative photographs of his work difficult, if not absurd. Our modest effort in a reading of his photographic essay Genesis was already an exercise in humble interpretation. And now, with his death, it is obviously for each to explore the worlds that he endeavoured to share.
Below, to acknowledge and celebrate his work, we limit ourselves to publishing some of his own reflections on his time with us.
“I’m a reporter. I only take pictures of people. The important thing is to concentrate on the essential, by which I mean the dignity of humanity.”
“I admit there’s a very specific message in my work. The Third World has never been as poor as it is today. The cost of raw materials is dropping while that of industrial products continually rises. The developing countries have never been as poor or as dependent as they are today.”
“The West is rich, with many more resources at its disposal. It is time to launch the concept of the universality of humanity. Photography lends itself to a demonstration of this and as an instrument of solidarity between peoples.”
Or probably we don’t know really how to show the pictures here. And sometimes I’m very upset because people look at my pictures more as an art object, and they are not. They are documents, to provoke a discussion, to provoke a debate. And it’s not in this side of the fine art that I have interest to show them. And here in the United States, now the documentary photography become a kind of part inside the fine arts, that they must be shown in a sense in this. And my interest was not this. It is not this. And I believe that is the difference in where the problem. The person who believe in the problem, they see these as documents to provoke a discussion, to provoke a debate. And I believe that’s a little bit different.
…
AMY GOODMAN: Let me read what Isabel Allende had to say about you and your work and what you do. She was writing an introduction to Open Veins of Latin America, and she said, “He has walked up and down Latin America listening to the voices of the poor and the oppressed, as well as those of the leaders and the intellectuals. He has lived with Indians, peasants, guerrillas, soldiers, artists, and outlaws; he has talked to presidents, tyrants, martyrs, priests, heroes, bandits, desperate mothers, and patient prostitutes. He has been bitten by snakes, suffered tropical fevers, walked in the jungle, and survived a massive heart attack; he has been persecuted by repressive regimes as well as by fanatical terrorists. He has opposed military dictatorships and all forms of brutality and exploitation, taking unthinkable risks in defense of human rights.
“He has more first-hand knowledge of Latin America than anybody else one can think of, and uses it to tell the world of the dreams and disillusions, the hopes and the failures of its people. He is an adventurer with a talent for writing, a compassionate heart, and a soft sense of humor.”
And then she quotes you: “We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living, are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.”
I wanted to ask you both about this issue of who you choose to present in your work, the voices that you want to be heard. Sebastião, you did unforgettable work in your book Workers, presenting us, the world, with a view of the Brazilian gold mines. And I was wondering if you can talk about how you discovered these mines, how you got there, what you saw.
Sebastião Salgado, Serra Pelada, Brazil
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: I discovered this mine, and I photographed this mine in 1986. But my wish was to go to the mine in 1980, when it was my first trip in Brazil when I was coming back from the exile. But it was impossible, because it was a big gold mine with a huge production, and who was taking care of this gold mine was the Federal Police in Brazil, that was the police linked with the dictatorship until this moment today. And they never gave me authorization to go there, because it was necessary to them to give the authorization. And I kept trying each year, until 1986, when the people that were working in the mine, they created a kind of cooperative, and they become owners of their destiny. In this moment, they gave me authorization to come.
And I came, and I spent there about three, four weeks with them, and was incredible, this mine. This mine was something so special. I remember when I came the first time. In the bottom of this huge hole, I have all my hair that came out in my skin. I saw 50,000 people in a huge space as two football stadiums down, no mechanical instruments, just digging with their hands and ax-pick, was for me a kind of — the noise of the gold inside this pit was something so incredible that I saw. And I spent there this time with them, and I discover incredible, incredible people there. They become, in the end, kind of slaves of their wish to become rich, because each person that was working in a mine, and each mine had two meters by three meters, was about, what, three-and-a-half yards by four-and-a-half yards, and they were employing about 15, 20 people each square like this, this small, people digging, people transportate. And the day that they get the gold, arrive in the gold, each person that was working had the right to receive one bag. And until now, they were working just for survival. And in this moment was the chance to have nothing as to have one pound of gold inside those thing, like this, because they have a lot of gold. And the people stay.
Sebastião Salgado, Serra Pelada, Brazil
And it was forbidden to have women there. They didn’t allow women. And the relations was very, very complicated. In the end, with this so hard work, with big, big, violent work, we had a faction that were a faction of the homosexuals, that finally they were working as válvula de escape — what’s this? It was a security issue for all these people to get not exposed, because in the end all the social life, the sexual life, was being around these workers that were homosexuals. One incredible thing, I met the leader of the homosexual movement. He was a big fighter against the police, because the police was very violent, was very violent, the police. He had his bond with holes of bullets, knives that was cut. And he was really a leader. I discuss with him. I said, “But what do you want to do the day that we hit gold?” He said, “I want to go to Paris and put a silicone chest as a woman.” That was so incredible, to see the — no, each one has one different mind. It become a slave of a dream in the end, you know? But very few get really the gold. But that, for me, was a very, very, very interesting, intensive experience.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you actually photograph this vast mine of 50,000 people?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, we had no — there was no nothing there. It was necessary to live with the miners. And I bring a hammock, and I get a group of people that are settled, to live with them. I begin to live with them. And as in photography in these books, I spent a long time in all these pictures. And to do these pictures, it’s necessary to live with the people. In the end, it’s not real, the photographer that made the pictures. It’s the relation that the photographer built with the people that the photographer received the pictures as a gift from the people. In reality, it’s this. And I went to work with them at 5:00 in the morning, come back the work with them 6:00 in the evening, spend full day there inside. In the end, that become your life also. You completely integrate with the process, with the people. And you go in the same places, work in the same places, discuss essential things.
I believe that the most important thing when you do this kind of photography is to work alone, because when you are alone, you are a kind of — you have a group that accepts you, that assimilates you. If you come with two persons, three persons, you create another group that’s very different than the true group, integrated, detached, because when you are alone, you have a headache, you say to the person that you have a headache. You are starving, you say that you are starving. You speak about your kids, about your family, and you become part of this community that you began to live. You integrate with the community. In this moment, you are part of the community. You receive from the community all kind of things that you have. And that becomes your way of life.
Sebastião Salgado, Serra Pelada, Brazil
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about militant photography.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: No, it is not militant photography. I don’t like very much this term. It’s a way of life, no? And for me, I did always the same photography. In the end, it’s different chapters of my life. This is not a militance; this is a way of life. This is completely different. Of course that when you go to the places and you meet with people, you receive the pictures, and you must tell what is going on. You have a responsibility to tell the people what is going on. And you must show. You must provoke a debate. You must provoke a discussion, because there is so many injustices. There is so many problems of distribution of wealth. There is so many problems of security. There is so many injustices around that you must show this. And that becomes a way of life. It’s not — for me, militance is you organize in your hand that you do this, you have a mission, as a militant. And this is not. This is a way of life. This is your life.
(Source: “Brazilian Photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and Uruguayan Writer Eduardo Galeano: An End-of-the-Millennium Interview”, Democracy Now!, 28/12/2000)
Sebastião Salgado: Roughly 2000 soldiers demonstrate with 10,000 people in the city of Porto, Portugal (September 1975)
Sebastião Salgado: “We believed that Portugal was going to be completely left-wing” The Portuguese revolution of 1974 was a moment of hope for Sebastião Salgado. The Brazilian photographer was living in Paris, far from the dictatorship in his country, and had recently taken up photography, abandoning his life as a young economics graduate. In those years, Sebastião Salgado now recalls, Portugal was a “country of hope”, it was “a dream”. Everyone discussed politics and everyone did it everywhere: “Look, it was a big party. It was something out of the ordinary.”
(Source: “Sebastião Salgado: “A gente acreditava que Portugal ia ser completamente de esquerda””, Público, 24/04/2024)
Sebastião Salgado: A worker occupied farming estate, Alcácer do Sal, Portugal (October, 1975)
Further reading/viewing/listening:
The documentary film, The Salt of the Earth (2014), directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (here).
“Photographing genocide broke me, it took a forest to heal me”, BBC Outlook, 06/17/2024.
“Brazilian Photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and Uruguayan Writer Eduardo Galeano: An End-of-the-Millennium Interview”, Democracy Now!, 28/12/2000.
“Sebastião Salgado obituary”, The Guardian, 25/05/2025.
“‘I photographed the world’: the career of Sebastião Salgado – in pictures”, The Guardian, 23/05/2025.
“Sebastião Salgado, Acclaimed Brazilian Photographer, Is Dead at 81”, The New York Times, 23/05/2025, Updated 26/05/2025.
“Sebastião Salgado: A Life in Pictures”, The New York Times, 23/05/2025, Updated 25/05/2025.
Instituto Terra (Together, Lélia Wanick Salgado and Sebastião Salgado worked since the 1990s on the restoration of a part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. In 1998, they succeeded in turning 17,000 acres into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra. The institute is dedicated to a mission of reforestation, conservation and environmental education.)
For Sebastião Salgado (1944-2025)
What I most want my pictures to do is to lead to reflection and then action. The revolution only comes through evolution.
Sebastião Salgado (British Journal of Photography, 24/05/2025)
“I photographed the world”, Sebastião Salgado once said. And we could add that he photographed the world from the perspective of those at it’s “periphery”, from the vantage point of its exploited and marginal territories, its labourers, its poor, its refugees, its indigenous, its children, and finally, from “nature” itself, endeavouring always to become a part of those he photographed, for as he would also, to be a photographer was a way of life, of sharing lives, of being with those he photographed. (The Guardian, 08/02/2024)
The vastness and density of his work makes any selection of presumably representative photographs of his work difficult, if not absurd. Our modest effort in a reading of his photographic essay Genesis was already an exercise in humble interpretation. And now, with his death, it is obviously for each to explore the worlds that he endeavoured to share.
Below, to acknowledge and celebrate his work, we limit ourselves to publishing some of his own reflections on his time with us.
“I’m a reporter. I only take pictures of people. The important thing is to concentrate on the essential, by which I mean the dignity of humanity.”
“I admit there’s a very specific message in my work. The Third World has never been as poor as it is today. The cost of raw materials is dropping while that of industrial products continually rises. The developing countries have never been as poor or as dependent as they are today.”
“The West is rich, with many more resources at its disposal. It is time to launch the concept of the universality of humanity. Photography lends itself to a demonstration of this and as an instrument of solidarity between peoples.”
Sebastião Salgado (British Journal of Photography, 24/05/2025)
Or probably we don’t know really how to show the pictures here. And sometimes I’m very upset because people look at my pictures more as an art object, and they are not. They are documents, to provoke a discussion, to provoke a debate. And it’s not in this side of the fine art that I have interest to show them. And here in the United States, now the documentary photography become a kind of part inside the fine arts, that they must be shown in a sense in this. And my interest was not this. It is not this. And I believe that is the difference in where the problem. The person who believe in the problem, they see these as documents to provoke a discussion, to provoke a debate. And I believe that’s a little bit different.
…
AMY GOODMAN: Let me read what Isabel Allende had to say about you and your work and what you do. She was writing an introduction to Open Veins of Latin America, and she said, “He has walked up and down Latin America listening to the voices of the poor and the oppressed, as well as those of the leaders and the intellectuals. He has lived with Indians, peasants, guerrillas, soldiers, artists, and outlaws; he has talked to presidents, tyrants, martyrs, priests, heroes, bandits, desperate mothers, and patient prostitutes. He has been bitten by snakes, suffered tropical fevers, walked in the jungle, and survived a massive heart attack; he has been persecuted by repressive regimes as well as by fanatical terrorists. He has opposed military dictatorships and all forms of brutality and exploitation, taking unthinkable risks in defense of human rights.
“He has more first-hand knowledge of Latin America than anybody else one can think of, and uses it to tell the world of the dreams and disillusions, the hopes and the failures of its people. He is an adventurer with a talent for writing, a compassionate heart, and a soft sense of humor.”
And then she quotes you: “We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living, are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.”
I wanted to ask you both about this issue of who you choose to present in your work, the voices that you want to be heard. Sebastião, you did unforgettable work in your book Workers, presenting us, the world, with a view of the Brazilian gold mines. And I was wondering if you can talk about how you discovered these mines, how you got there, what you saw.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: I discovered this mine, and I photographed this mine in 1986. But my wish was to go to the mine in 1980, when it was my first trip in Brazil when I was coming back from the exile. But it was impossible, because it was a big gold mine with a huge production, and who was taking care of this gold mine was the Federal Police in Brazil, that was the police linked with the dictatorship until this moment today. And they never gave me authorization to go there, because it was necessary to them to give the authorization. And I kept trying each year, until 1986, when the people that were working in the mine, they created a kind of cooperative, and they become owners of their destiny. In this moment, they gave me authorization to come.
And I came, and I spent there about three, four weeks with them, and was incredible, this mine. This mine was something so special. I remember when I came the first time. In the bottom of this huge hole, I have all my hair that came out in my skin. I saw 50,000 people in a huge space as two football stadiums down, no mechanical instruments, just digging with their hands and ax-pick, was for me a kind of — the noise of the gold inside this pit was something so incredible that I saw. And I spent there this time with them, and I discover incredible, incredible people there. They become, in the end, kind of slaves of their wish to become rich, because each person that was working in a mine, and each mine had two meters by three meters, was about, what, three-and-a-half yards by four-and-a-half yards, and they were employing about 15, 20 people each square like this, this small, people digging, people transportate. And the day that they get the gold, arrive in the gold, each person that was working had the right to receive one bag. And until now, they were working just for survival. And in this moment was the chance to have nothing as to have one pound of gold inside those thing, like this, because they have a lot of gold. And the people stay.
And it was forbidden to have women there. They didn’t allow women. And the relations was very, very complicated. In the end, with this so hard work, with big, big, violent work, we had a faction that were a faction of the homosexuals, that finally they were working as válvula de escape — what’s this? It was a security issue for all these people to get not exposed, because in the end all the social life, the sexual life, was being around these workers that were homosexuals. One incredible thing, I met the leader of the homosexual movement. He was a big fighter against the police, because the police was very violent, was very violent, the police. He had his bond with holes of bullets, knives that was cut. And he was really a leader. I discuss with him. I said, “But what do you want to do the day that we hit gold?” He said, “I want to go to Paris and put a silicone chest as a woman.” That was so incredible, to see the — no, each one has one different mind. It become a slave of a dream in the end, you know? But very few get really the gold. But that, for me, was a very, very, very interesting, intensive experience.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you actually photograph this vast mine of 50,000 people?
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: Well, we had no — there was no nothing there. It was necessary to live with the miners. And I bring a hammock, and I get a group of people that are settled, to live with them. I begin to live with them. And as in photography in these books, I spent a long time in all these pictures. And to do these pictures, it’s necessary to live with the people. In the end, it’s not real, the photographer that made the pictures. It’s the relation that the photographer built with the people that the photographer received the pictures as a gift from the people. In reality, it’s this. And I went to work with them at 5:00 in the morning, come back the work with them 6:00 in the evening, spend full day there inside. In the end, that become your life also. You completely integrate with the process, with the people. And you go in the same places, work in the same places, discuss essential things.
I believe that the most important thing when you do this kind of photography is to work alone, because when you are alone, you are a kind of — you have a group that accepts you, that assimilates you. If you come with two persons, three persons, you create another group that’s very different than the true group, integrated, detached, because when you are alone, you have a headache, you say to the person that you have a headache. You are starving, you say that you are starving. You speak about your kids, about your family, and you become part of this community that you began to live. You integrate with the community. In this moment, you are part of the community. You receive from the community all kind of things that you have. And that becomes your way of life.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about militant photography.
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO: No, it is not militant photography. I don’t like very much this term. It’s a way of life, no? And for me, I did always the same photography. In the end, it’s different chapters of my life. This is not a militance; this is a way of life. This is completely different. Of course that when you go to the places and you meet with people, you receive the pictures, and you must tell what is going on. You have a responsibility to tell the people what is going on. And you must show. You must provoke a debate. You must provoke a discussion, because there is so many injustices. There is so many problems of distribution of wealth. There is so many problems of security. There is so many injustices around that you must show this. And that becomes a way of life. It’s not — for me, militance is you organize in your hand that you do this, you have a mission, as a militant. And this is not. This is a way of life. This is your life.
(Source: “Brazilian Photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and Uruguayan Writer Eduardo Galeano: An End-of-the-Millennium Interview”, Democracy Now!, 28/12/2000)
Sebastião Salgado: “We believed that Portugal was going to be completely left-wing”
The Portuguese revolution of 1974 was a moment of hope for Sebastião Salgado. The Brazilian photographer was living in Paris, far from the dictatorship in his country, and had recently taken up photography, abandoning his life as a young economics graduate. In those years, Sebastião Salgado now recalls, Portugal was a “country of hope”, it was “a dream”. Everyone discussed politics and everyone did it everywhere: “Look, it was a big party. It was something out of the ordinary.”
(Source: “Sebastião Salgado: “A gente acreditava que Portugal ia ser completamente de esquerda””, Público, 24/04/2024)
Further reading/viewing/listening:
The documentary film, The Salt of the Earth (2014), directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (here).
“Photographing genocide broke me, it took a forest to heal me”, BBC Outlook, 06/17/2024.
“Brazilian Photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and Uruguayan Writer Eduardo Galeano: An End-of-the-Millennium Interview”, Democracy Now!, 28/12/2000.
“Sebastião Salgado obituary”, The Guardian, 25/05/2025.
“‘I photographed the world’: the career of Sebastião Salgado – in pictures”, The Guardian, 23/05/2025.
“Sebastião Salgado, Acclaimed Brazilian Photographer, Is Dead at 81”, The New York Times, 23/05/2025, Updated 26/05/2025.
“Sebastião Salgado: A Life in Pictures”, The New York Times, 23/05/2025, Updated 25/05/2025.
Instituto Terra (Together, Lélia Wanick Salgado and Sebastião Salgado worked since the 1990s on the restoration of a part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. In 1998, they succeeded in turning 17,000 acres into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra. The institute is dedicated to a mission of reforestation, conservation and environmental education.)