Sebastião Salgado, legendary political photographer, dies at 81

“I’m a person that comes from the left, comes from a humanist way of thinking. So, my photography couldn’t be separate from that. It couldn’t not serve those causes.” – Sebastião Salgado

Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, one of the most important and well-known photographers in the world, died May 23 at the age of 81.

His stark images, mostly shot on film in black and white with high contrast and often with dramatic light, are unmistakable in their grandiosity and their ability to tell the stories of workers, oppressed people and of our planet’s majestic but distressed environment.

Salgado’s striking work on central issues of our times largely focused outside the margins of the core industrialized countries. In his book Workers (1993), Salgado documented the intense exploitation of workers engaged in manual labor in the developing world. In his collection Migration: Humanity in Transition (2000), he documented the realities of mass migration which have reached historic levels worldwide due to the ravages of imperialism, war and climate catastrophe. In Other Americas (1985) and An Uncertain Grace (1990), Salgado documented farmers, indigenous people and landscapes of remote regions of several Latin American and African countries. In his work Amazônia (2021), Salgado photographed the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and the indigenous people who live there. In Genesis (2014), Salgado spent eight years documenting parts of the Earth’s environment that have not yet been destroyed but are at risk from climate change. 

After leaving Brazil in the late 1960s during the right-wing military dictatorship, Salgado spent decades traveling the Americas, Africa, Europe and the rest of the world. He spent months at a time documenting the people and the geography of some of the most oppressed peoples of the world, as well as some of the most incredible and endangered parts of the Earth’s environment. 

When Salgado returned to Brazil in the 1990s, he dug deep into the struggles of rural landless workers, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon rainforest, and the struggle to sustain the rainforest itself in the face of international capital ravaging what are referred to as “the lungs of the Earth.”

Salgado didn’t just take photos; he and his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado started an organization called Instituto Terra dedicated to reversing environmental damage in Brazil. Instituto Terra educated people on the importance of the Amazon and has planted more than 3 million trees.

Salgado actively supported militant organizing among rural landless workers in Brazil. His passing was marked by Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), which said, “It is with deep sadness that we received the news of the passing of Sebastião Salgado, one of the most important photographers in contemporary history. His passing is a huge loss to art, to human rights and to all who believe in the image as an instrument of social transformation. As a photographer he maintained a relationship of solidarity and support with the Landless Workers Movement, recognizing in the movement one of the most legitimate expressions of the struggle for social justice in Brazil…may his memory be alive in every image, in every portrait, in every fight that seeks justice and humanity.”

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party said, “His inconformity with the fact that the world is so unequal and his obstinate talent in portraying the reality of the oppressed always served as a wake-up call for the conscience of all humanity. Salgado not only used his eyes and his camera to portray people: he also used the fullness of his soul and his heart. For this very reason, his work will continue to be a cry for solidarity.”

In a 2024 interview with Geographical, Salgado said, “Each photographer works with his own ideology, his history, his heritage. I can’t say my work is because I’m an ‘activist’ or that I want to show the plight of people being exploited. Of course, I’m a guy from the left – I’m a leftist. I was working in these places because I am part of a society that needs to see what is happening on our planet. But I grew up in a Third World country. I see the injustice that we have on this planet. I have a big hope that we can have a better way to live, a better situation for the health of our planet, and better social protection for everyone on this planet.”

Around a decade ago I had the privilege to see the exhibition of his work Genesis at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Seeing his stunning landscapes and portraits printed in huge displays was an unforgettable experience. His photos were breathtaking. He helped us truly see the reality that is barely considered by those in power – the backbreaking manual labor done by millions, the peoples displaced or eliminated, and the environment ravaged – all so a small class of rich people can accumulate more profit. 

While Sebastião Salgado has passed on, his vast trove of powerful images will continue to inspire people to fight for social and ecological justice.

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