Sebastião Salgado
April 17th, 2023
Sebastião Salgado
By: Connor Albaugh
Salgado is a much different photographer that I am not used to seeing or researching about. He was born in the year of 1944 “in Aimorés, Brazil” (Article #1). Interestingly enough, not only was he born in Brazil, but he was born on a farm. This farm “was more than 50 percent rainforest” as Salgado “lived with incredible birds, incredible animals, swam in small rivers with caimans, and everything produced on the farm they consumed” (Article #2). Unfortunately, Salgado left his home town to pursue a better life for himself despite the presence his environment had on him physically and emotionally. Before “photography in the early 1970s,” Salgado had “trained to be an economist” (Article #1). He chose to attend São Paulo University where Salgado would graduate in 1968 “with a master’s degree in economics (Article #1). After his master’s, Salgado still wasn’t finished with his education. Three years later, Salgado attended “the University of Paris” where he would get “his PhD in economics” and successfully graduated in 1971 (Article #1). Following his PhD, the opportunity’s for Salgado were endless. He worked for “the International Coffee Organization in London” and his work would having him “traveling to Africa quite often” (Article #1). These trips to Africa would ultimately be the reason he chose to pursue photography as a career. In due time, Salgado became a freelance photographer in 1974 (Article #1). He was “a photojournalist for the Sygma agency in Paris, worked for Gamma from 1975 until 1979, and then eventually joined Magnum which was a photography cooperative founded in 1947 by famous photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson” (Article #1). Not only is Magnum extremely well known and incredibly popular, but this is Salgado’s way of knowing that he made it as a photographer.
The photographic style used by Salgado in his work is quite specific. He used “analogue and digital cameras” which create these “black and white landscapes” for each of his photographs (Article #3). His goal in his photography was to “capture the hard realities of the modern world” (Article #2). He first began “capturing the famine and its effects in the Sahel region of Africa and has since then continued to document the most uncomfortable aspects of our contemporary world which are human pain resulting from exploitation, terror of wars, and ecological destruction” (Article #4). To simplify, “Salgado’s images presented everything from the gritty truths of human toil to the perplexing, eternal beauty of nature” (Article #2). Salgado pictures his pictures in the form of a series rather than having more than multiple individual images due to the fact that “each work’s point of view refuses to separate subject from context” (Article #1). This means that in a series, the message as to what the series is about and why it was captured becomes more easily imminent and interpreted better than being photos without any order or basis. In terms of what Salgado’s photographs are about, they “impart the dignity and integrity of his subjects without forcing their heroism or implicitly soliciting pity” (Article #1). This is a very important thing to know about Salgado’s work mainly because many photographs are forced for things such as awareness commercials on behalf of conditions in third world countries. Instead of forcing what is happening, there is a sense of appreciation and respect towards Salgado’s subjects and landscapes that allows his viewers to see struggle or grief photographically. Last but not least, Salgado and his work “are powerful enough to take viewers to remote places but also close a gap of indifference” as Susan Sontag highlights in one of her short essays (Article #4). With such vivid imagery and meaning held within each and every one of his photographs, not only are they pleasing to look at, but they are incredibly cohesive in bringing to light certain things that are happening in our world that we often take for granted.
Salgado has a lot of incredible photographs to view, but there was one that stood out to me. The black and white photograph at the top of this blog pictures a “Waura group in the Upper Xingu region” taken in 2005 (Article #3). This group is “an indigenous group in Brazil which are named Wauja or Waura” who are known for their “exceptional quality of their poverty, baskets, feather artwork, and ritual masks (Article #5). These people also have “a complex mytho-cosmology, in which links between animals, things, humans, and extra-human beings” (Article #5). This is significant because Salgado spent a lot of his childhood with different animals in his Brazilian hometown and this photo merely serves to take into his childhood while also highlighting an indigenous group and what they are all about. The landscape that Salgado chose to capture happens to be in a “upper Xingu river” where it looks like inhabitants are traveling to different areas in the region. These people in this region have experienced conflicts, one of which happened to be “armed attacks by farmers from the region of the Upper Batovi, who burnt the only three houses of small village called Ulupuene which was used for defense (Article #5). Overall, the composition of this photograph is superb. The lighting from the sky creates a silhouette of the two people in the foreground paddle-boarding through the river and illuminate the ripples in the water around them. The lighting also creates shadows and makes the background where other canoes and people in these canoes become apart of the surrounding environment. The light creating shadows acts as a vignette on all four sides of the photograph which forces the viewers focus towards the paddle-boarders in the foreground and creates a suspenseful and ominous feeling elsewhere in the photograph. Leading lines is also a present detail in this photograph. The paddle held by the subject in the front of the paddle board in the foreground leads the viewers eyes into the sky where they can see the pathway of light that it created to highlight these foreground paddlers. The ripples in the water from the paddlers in the background lead the viewer to see more paddlers in the background while also taking into account the beauty of the environment off to the right of the photograph. The depth of field is also very well captured in this photograph, as one not only sees paddlers in the foreground but paddlers in the background. There is no real definition as to what lies ahead of these paddlers which allows the viewers to use their imagination as to where they may be traveling or what trouble they may run into in this particular region. The focus is expertly done, as the texture of the water can be seen clearly in the foreground of the image as well as the silhouette created by the sunlight at the top of the photograph. The last thing that I really enjoy about this photograph is how you are able to see the reflections of the two paddlers in the water as a result of the sunlight. This sunlight makes a pathway for the viewer to notice the silhouette as well as foreground details and background details. I feel as though I am engulfed in this photograph, as a viewer I cannot take my eyes off of it. I feel as though I am there in this particular region with these people and that I am surrounded by the presence of water. Salgado and his ability to capture such rich and visually encapsulating images not only enhances the detail of the photograph and the subjects within it, but generates such pertinent and specific meaning that allows one to take in the image as well as understand the premise for why the image was taken to begin with.
Sources:
Article #1 - https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/sebastião-salgado?all/all/all/all/0
Article #5 - https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Waujá
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