May 23, 2025
Sabastio Salgado, photo: Gorka Lejarcegi
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, musician Gilberto Gil, and other Brazilian personalities highlighted the extraordinary work of photographer Sebastiao Delgado, who died on Friday at the age of 81.
“We have received very sad news, the death of our colleague Sebastiao Salgado, if not the greatest, one of the greatest and best photographers the world has ever known,” Lula said at a ceremony in Brasilia.
The president learned of the news during an event for the visit of his Angolan counterpart, João Lourenço, and asked for a minute of silence in memory of the prestigious photographer and environmental activist born in Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil.
In a statement shortly thereafter, Lula described Salgado’s work as “a cry for solidarity.”
“His nonconformity with the fact that the world is so unequal and his stubborn talent in portraying the reality of the oppressed always served as a wake-up call for the conscience of all humanity,” he said in the statement.
Salgado, Lula continued, “did not only use his eyes and his camera to portray people: he also used the fullness of his soul and his heart.”
Singer Gilberto Gil posted a photo on Instagram with the photographer accompanied by a message: “Rest in peace, great Sebastião Salgado.”
Gold mine in Serra Pelada, Brazil
Gil recalled that he composed the song Refloresta at Salgado’s request for a campaign by the Terra Institute, founded with his wife Lelia Wanick, to regenerate forests and biodiversity.
Filmmaker Joao Moreira Salles, author of the book Arrabalde, in search of the Amazon, said that the best way to honor the photographer, a great defender of the planet’s largest rainforest, would be to “bury” a bill that relaxes environmental authorizations in Brazil.
The text was approved this week by the Senate and will now be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, amid criticism from environmental NGOs.
“If parliamentarians want to honor him, the only thing they can do is bury that proposal,” Moreira Salles, brother of Oscar-winning director Walter Salles, told AFP.
Rio’s Fluminense soccer club also dedicated a few words to Salgado, who was a fan of the team. “Salgado, who captured the world in black and white, never lost his tricolor heart. Our deepest condolences to the family, friends, and admirers of this eternal name in Brazilian photojournalism,” the club posted.
Amazonia
Salgado, known for his powerful documentary photography, which includes his great black-and-white photos of the Amazon rainforest and some of the world’s conflicts, was described in a message by the French Academy of Fine Arts, of which he was a member, as a “great witness to the human condition and the state of the planet.”
In a statement sent to the press, his family reported that “he contracted a particular form of malaria in 2010 in Indonesia while working on his Genesis project.”
“Fifteen years later, complications from this disease led to severe leukemia, which took its toll,” they explained.
From Rwanda to Guatemala, via Indonesia and Bangladesh, the Brazilian, who also had French nationality, Salgado documented famines, wars, exoduses, and labor exploitation in the Third World.
His photographs were published in the international press and in magazines such as Life and Time, and were the subject of countless books and exhibitions, particularly in Paris, where he lived for much of his life.
Salgado saw photography as “a powerful language to try to establish a better relationship between man and nature,” the French Academy of Fine Arts recalled in his biography.
South Sahara, Algeria
The artist, who trained as an economist, worked almost exclusively in black and white. He considered it both an interpretation of reality and a way of conveying the irreducible dignity of humanity.
Born on February 8, 1944, in the rural town of Aimorés, in the state of Minas Gerais, Salgado went into exile in France in 1969 to flee the military dictatorship with his future wife, Lelia Wanick, with whom he had two children.
“I write with a camera; it is the language I have chosen to express myself (…). In a way, my point of view, which is very focused on social and community issues, is not so different from the basic concepts of most religions. It takes time, a lot of time, to compose a coherent narrative: you don’t just take a photo. You build a story. At the end of the day, I think documentary photographers are people who like to tell stories.” Salgado once said.
Salgado trained as an economist before becoming a photographer in the early 1970s. He earned a master’s degree in economics from the University of São Paulo in 1968 and a doctorate in economics from the University of Paris in 1971.
His work at the International Coffee Organization in London required frequent trips to Africa, and
In 1974, he worked as a freelance photojournalist for the Sygma agency in Paris. He then worked for Gamma from 1975 to 1979, when he joined Magnum, the international photography cooperative founded in 1947 by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger, and David Seymour.
Salgado produced several extensive documentary series throughout his career, several of which have been published. These include Sahel: L’homme en détresse (1986), Other Americas (1986), An Uncertain Grace (1990) and Workers (1993), a worldwide investigation into the growing obsolescence of manual labor.
He received numerous awards for his work, including the Eugene Smith Award for Humanitarian Photography, two ICP Infinity Awards for Journalism, the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Award, and the Arles International Festival Award for the best photography book of the year for Workers.
Salgado’s work is an undeniable graphic testimony that through the struggles of life there lies an inspiration for fundamental social change.
all photos: Sebastiao Salgado. For more on the images and life of Salgado go to International Center of Photography (ICP)
Source: Cuba en Resumen