Sebastião Salgado (Aimorés MG 1944)
Sebastião Salgado is a photographer with a degree in economics, having completed a doctorate at the University of Paris. Between 1971 and 1973, he worked for the International Coffee Organization in London. During a trip to Africa, where he coordinated a project on coffee culture in Angola, he decided to become a photographer. He moved to Paris from 1974 onwards, working at the Sygma agencies, until the following year, and Gamma, between 1975 and 1979. During this period, he documented social and political events in trouble in Europe and Africa. In 1979, he joined the Magnum agency, where he remained until 1994, the year he founded his own company, Amazonas Imagens. Between 1977 and 1984, he traveled through Latin America, recording the living conditions of peasants and indigenous people, a work that resulted in the book Autres Ameriques, published in 1986. In the 1980s, he collaborated for 15 months With the French group Doctors Without Borders, traveling through the Sahel region of Africa, and recording the devastation caused by the drought. Between 1986 and 1992, he produced the Workers series, documenting manual work and difficult living conditions in different parts of the world. He is the author of the books Sahel: L'Homme en Détresse (France, 1986), La Main de l'Homme (France, 1993), Terra (Brazil, 1997), Workers: an Archeology of the Industrial Era (Brazil, 1996) and Portraits of Children of the Exodus (Brazil, 2000), among others.
Critical Comment
During a trip to Africa, to coordinate a project on coffee culture in Angola, Sebastião Salgado decides to become a photographer, as a way of denouncing misery and social problems in the world. The first years of photography are marked by great political engagement. He settled in Paris in 1974 and began to cover the troubled social and political events in Europe and Africa, such as, for example, the living conditions of immigrants in European countries and the performance of the Irish Republican Army - IRA.
To 1983, Salgado travels through several Latin American countries, preparing a panel on the life of peasants and the cultural resistance of the Indians and their descendants (Ameriques, 1986). His images reveal the archaism of the way of life and the precariousness of working conditions, alongside the presence of religiosity and death. Between 1984 and 1985, on a trip to the Sahel, a pre-desert region of North Africa, together with doctors without borders, he photographs the devastation caused by the drought. His images of women wandering the desert and very ill children were disseminated around the world (Sahel, L'Homme en Détresse, 1986).
Questioning the economic imbalance between rich and poor countries, the photographer. undertakes a vast work of documentation of manual work in various regions of the world. Photographs the harsh working conditions in the sugarcane or gold mines of Serra Pelada, in Brazil; on tea plantations in Rwanda; in the construction of a dam in Rajasthan, India; or in the oil wells in Kuwait. The set of photographs from the exhibition Workers was shown simultaneously in eight countries in 1993.
In the opinion of historian Pedro Vasquez, Salgado's work, in terms of creative affinities, can be compared to photographers Eugene Smith (1918 - 1978) and Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908). In common with Smith, he has solidarity with the human being, reflected in a certain air of gravity and the feeling of the tragic that permeate his photos. In relation to Cartier-Bresson, he shares the keen sense of composition, the so-called "decisive moment": the fleeting moment in which all the constitutive elements of a certain scene harmonize in an expressive moment.
In his photographs, of classic composition, The use of light and intense blacks stands out. With the symbolic strength of the images and the gravity of the faces, the work of Sebastião Salgado, in addition to the character of a complaint, rescues human dignity and pays tribute to the characters portrayed. Photographs - São Paulo SP
Collection Cultural Foundation of Curitiba - Curitiba PR
Joaquim Paiva Collection - Brasília DF
Criticism
"Sebastião Salgado is a bearer of the mystery of art. Photograph is not described: Sit down, and feel in a special way, coming from what made Sebastião Salgado to be recognized around the world, in so few years, as a very special photographer. They provoke, tenderness, or grievance, or guilt, or aesthetic delight, before the characteristic photograph of Sebastião Salgado comes to us, in a single gust, tenderness and pain and guilt and aesthetic pleasure. Inseparable and indistinguishable, consistent and undisguised, in one gust, all the rich feelings that today's emotional poverty has not yet been able to consume and devour.
It is this special ability that makes Sebastião Salgado, Internationally, the most requested, the most acclaimed and the most awarded photographer today (unquestionable proof of such relevance: only in 1991, New York, the planetary capital of photography, set up two major exhibitions of his). The special attention that Sebastião Salgado awakens does not come from modern computer tricks, which, moreover, have nothing to do with photography. Nor is it due to his favorite themes, as a 'New Yorker' writer supposed. I even structured an essay to refute the angry thesis of the article, according to which Sebastião Salgado's 'rhetorical' consists of the 'easy exploitation of tragedy' as a theme, in her 'beautification', to shock the viewer of her photos".
Janio de Freitas
FREITAS, Janio De. The condition of Salgado. In: SALGADO, Sebastião. The best photos. Presentation Janio de Freitas; Photography Sebastião Salgado. 1992.
"The photographs of Sebastião Salgado are, above all, the result of an exhaustive process of choices between what was seen and what should be re-seen by each of us. process that becomes even more complex and subjective after the places, people or events he intends to photograph (or ends up photographing, by chance)
Using three or four Leikas cameras and dozens of rolls of films a day, Sebastião Salgado is capable of producing more than ten thousand images in a single trip, among the numerous that make up the extensive script outlined in the last two decades to document stories (or history) and tell them through photographs: hunger in Africa, work in the contemporary world, the struggle for the land, the movement of populations, etc."
Maria Inez Turazzi
National Historical and Artistic Heritage Magazine. IPHAN. Photography. Nº 27, 1998, p. 225.
Individual exhibitions
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Other Americas, at Funarte's Photography Gallery
1983 - São Paulo SP - Other Americas, at the Fotoptica photo gallery
1984 - Paris (France) - Vidas Secas, at Magnum Galerie
1986 - Amsterdam (Holland) - Sahel: L'Homme en Detresse, at the Canon Photo Gallery
1986 - Arles (France) - Sahel: L'Homme en Detresse, at the International D'Arles Festival
1986 - Madrid (Spain) - Other Americas, at the Contemporary Art Museum of Madrid
1986 - Paris (France) - Other Americas, at the Maison de l'Amérique Latine
1986 - Paris (France) - Sahel: L'Homme en Detresse, at Palais de Tokyo
1987 - Lausanne (Switzerland) - Other Americas at the Musée de l'Elysée
1987 - Lausanne (Switzerland) - Sahel: L'Homme en Detresse, at the Musée de l'Elysée
1988 - Finland - Other Americas, at Tornio Arts Museum
1988 - Israel - Other Americas, at the Mishkan Museum Le'omanut
1988 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Other Americas, at Funarte
1988 - Rotterdam (Holland) - Other Americas, at the Museum Voor Land in Volkenkunde
1988 - São Paulo SP - Sahel: L'Homme en Detresse, at Masp
1989 - Göteborg (Sweden) - Retrospective at Hasselblad Center
1989 - Havana (Cuba) - Retrospective, at the Bienal de Cuba
1989 - Beijing (China) - Sahel: L'Homme en Detresse, at the National Gallery of Art
1989 - Shanghai (China) - Other Americas, at the Palace of Youth
1990 - Düsseldorf (Germany) - Retrospective at Künsthalle
1990 - Edinburgh (Scotland) - Retrospective at Stills Gallery
1990 - London (England) - Retrospective at Photographer's Gallery
1990 - San Francisco (United States) - An Uncertain Grace, at the Modern Art Museum
1991 - Arles (France) - Other Americas, at Rencontres Internationales d'Arles
1991 - Braunschweig (Germany) - Other Americas at the Museum Für
1991 - Exeter (England) - Retrospective at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum
1991 - Los Angeles (United States) - An Uncertain Grace, at the Wight Art Gallery, at the University from California
1991 - New York (United States) - An Uncertain Grace, at the International Center of Photography
1991 - Rouen (France) - Other Americas, at the Rouen Festival
1991 - San Diego (United States) - An Uncertain Grace, at the Museum of Photographic Arts
1992 - Cambridge (United States) - An Uncertain Grace, at Carpenter Center Harvard
1992 - Cardiff (Wales) - Retrospective, in the photogallery
1992 - Cologne (Germany) - Workers, at Römisch- Germanisches Museum
1992 - Córdoba (Spain) - Other Americas, at the 2000 Gallery
1992 - Dudelange (Luxembourg) - Other Americas at the Municipal Musée
1992 - Glasgow (Scotland) - Retrospective at the Glasgow Arts Center
1992 - Santiago de Compostela (Spain) - Other Americas, at Pazo Fonseca
1992 - Washington (United States) - An Uncertain Grace, at Corcoran Gallery
1993 - Bratislava (Slovakia) - Workers at the National Gallery Slovakia
1993 - Córdoba (Spain) - Other Americas, at the Gran Teatro de Cordoba
1993 - Lisbon (Portugal) - work at the Cultural Center of Bélem
1993 - London (England) - Workers, at the Royal Festival Hall
1993 - Louisville (United States) - Workers, at The JB Speed Art Museum
1993 - Madrid (Spain) - Trabajadores, at the National Library
1993 - Paris (France) - Individual, at the National Center de la Photographie
1993 - Paris (France) - Workers at the Palais de Tokyo
1993 - Pennsylvania (United States) - Workers, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
1993 - Tokyo (Japan) - Retrospective at the National Museum of Modern Art
1994 - Aix-en-Provence (France) - Workers, at Bibliothèque Méjanes
1994 - Alicante (Spain) - Workers, at Fundacion Cultural, Cam
1994 - Atlanta (United States) - Workers, at the High Museum of Art Folk, Photography Galleries
1994 - Bradford (England) - Workers at The National Musem of Photography, Film and Television
1994 - Copenhagen (Denmark) - Workers at Arberjdermuseet
1994 - Curitiba PR - Workers, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of Curitiba
1994 - Dallas (United States) - Workers at the Dallas Museum of Art
1994 - Glasgow (Scotland) - Retrospective, at the McLellan Galleries
1994 - Iowa City (United States) - Workers, at The University of Iowa Museum of Art
1994 - Lausanne (Switzerland) - Workers at the Musée de l'Elysée
1994 - Milan (Italy) - Workers at Palazzo Affari Ai Giureconsulti
1994 - Paris (France) - Serra Pelada, at Galerie Debret
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Workers, at MAM/RJ
1994 - Rome (Italy) - Workers at Palazzo delle espositioni
1994 - Rotterdam (Holland) - Workers at Nederlands Photo Institute
1994 - São Paulo SP - Workers, at MASP
1994 - Tokyo (Japan) - Workers, at The Bunkamura Museum of Art
1995 - Bath (England) - Workers, at The Royal Photographic Society
1995 - Stockholm (Sweden) - Workers, at the Kulturhuset
1995 - Hiroshima (Japan) - Workers, at the Onomichi Municipal Museum of Art
1995 - Le Chouf (Lebanon) - Workers, at the Palais de Beiteddine
1995 - Montpellier (France) - Other Americas, at Montpellier Photo Visions
1995 - New York (United States) - Workers, at the International Center of Photography
1995 - Paris (France) - Serra Pelada, at Le Latina
1995 - Rochester (United States) - Workers, at the George Eastman House
1995 - Saint Jean des Monts (France) - Serra Pelada, in the Palais de Congrès
1995 - Sarasota (United States) - Workers, at The John & Marble Ringling Museum of Art
1995 - Sydney (Australia) - Workers at The Art Gallery of New South Wales
1995 - Vicenza (Italy) - Workers at the Basilica Palladiana
1996 - Antwerp (Belgium) - Other Americas, at Hessenhuis
1996 - Charleroi (Belgium) - Serra Pelada, at Musée de la Photographie
1996 - Cleveland (United States) - Serra Pelada, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art
1996 - Florida (United States) - Serra Pelada, at Palm Beach Photographic Museum
1996 - Hamburg (Germany) - Workers at Deichtorhallen
1996 - Hawaii (United States) - Workers, Honolulu Academy of Arts
1996 - Imola (Italy) - Workers, at Chiostri S. Domenico
1996 - Luxembourg - Workers, at Hall Victor Hugo
1996 - Omaha (United States) - Workers at the Joslyn Art Museum
1996 - Paris (France) - Retrospective at L'Espace Photographique de Paris
1996 - Pennsylvania (United States) - Workers, at the Palmer Museum of Art, University Park
1996 - Schleswig- Holstein (Germany) - An Uncertain Grace, at the Städtisches Museum
1996 - Turin (Italy) - Workers, at the Museo dell'Automobile, Movimento Sviluppo and Pace
1997 - Belo Horizonte MG - Workers, at the Pampulha Art Museum
1997 - Berlin (Germany) - Workers, at the Brazilian Cultural Institute
1997 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Workers, at the Museo de Belas Artes
1997 - Cholet (France) - Serra Pelada, at Groupe D?Animation Photographique
1997 - Ciudad Bolívar (Venezuela) - Workers at the Jésus Soto Modern Art Museum
1997 - Hornu (Belgium) - Workers at the Grand Hornu Images
1997 - Kuopio (Finland) - An Uncertain Grace at Victor Barsokevitsch Valokuvakeskus
1997 - Madison (United States) - Workers, at the Elvehjem Museum of Art
1997 - Montenegro (Yugoslavia) - Sahel: L'Homme en Detresse, at the Biennale of Cétinié
1997 - San Diego (United States) - Workers, at the Museum of Contemporary Art
1997 - São Paulo SP - Terra, at Espaço Unibanco
1998 - Andorra La Vella (Andorra) - Workers at Andorran National Commission for UNESCO
1998 - Mexico City (Mexico) - Workers, at the Museo de Arte Moderno
1998 - Pachuca (Mexico) - Serra Pelada, in the Historical Archive y Museo of Mineral
1998 - Valladolid (Spain) - An Uncertain Grace, at the Valladolid Ayuntamiento
1998 - Washington (United States) - Other Americas at Art Gallery, Inter-American Development Bank
1998 - Washington (United States) - Other Americas at Woodrow Wilson Center
1999 - Bern (Switzerland) - Workers at The Old Korhaus
1999 - Iserlohn (Germany) - Workers at Stadtische Gallery
1999 - La Coruña (Spain) - An Uncertain Grace, at Casa de Las Ciencias
1999 - Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) - Other Americas, at the Insular Culture Center
1999 - Madrid (Spain) - An Uncertain Grace, at EFDI
1999 - Munich (Germany) - Other Americas, Bayrische Staatsoper
2000 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Migrations, at Fundación Proa
2000 - Honfleur (France) - An Uncertain Grace, 4th Festival Chroniques Nomades, at Les Greniers à Sel
2000 - Lisbon (Portugal) - Exodos, in Parque das Nações
2000 - Madrid (Spain) - Migrations, at the Circle of Bellas Artes
2000 - Marseille (France) - Migrations, at the Hotel de la Région
2000 - Milan (Italy) - Migrations, at Aregario and Istituto Martinitt
2000 - New York (United States) - Migrations, at the United Nations Hall
2000 - Paris (France) - Migrations, at Maison Européenne de la Photographie
2000 - Porto Alegre RS - Exódos, at the Gasómetro plant
2000 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Exódos, at the Planetarium - Museum of the Universe and at the Moreira Salles Institute
2000 - Rjukan (Norway) - Workers at the Norsk Industriarbeider Museum
2000 - Rochester (United States) - Migrations, at the George Eastman House
2000 - Rome (Italy) - Migrations, at Scuderie Papali Al Quirinale
2000 - Saarbrücken (Germany) - Workers, at the Schichtwechsel festival 2000
2000 - São Paulo SP - Exodos, at Sesc Pompéia
2000 - Valencia (Spain) - An uncertain grace, at EFDI
2000 - Warszawa (Poland) - Workers, at the Contemporary Art Center Zamek Ujazdowski
2001 - Barcelona (Spain) - Migrations, at La Pedrera
2001 - Berlin (Germany) - Migrations, at the Deutsches Historisches Museum
2001 - Biella (Italy) - Workers, at Palazzo Cisterna
2001 - Brasília DF - Exodos, in the contemporary cultural space Venancio- ECCO
2001 - Brussels (Belgium) - Migrations, at Le Botanique
2001 - Cagliari (Italy) - Workers, at Ghetto degli Ebrei
2001 - Edinburgh (Scotland) - Migrations, at the City Art Center
2001 - Faro (Portugal) - Workers, at the XXI Music Cultural Association
2001 - Helsinki (Finland) - Migrations, at Helsinki City Art Museum
2001 - Modena (Italy) - Migrations, at Ponte Alto
2001 - New York (United States) - Migrations, at the International Center of Photography
2001 - Palma de Mallorca (Spain) - Migrations, Na Nostra
2001 - Prague (Czech Republic) - Migrations, at Manes Gallery
2001 - Santa Fe (United States) - Migrations, at The Marion Center for Photographic Arts / The Museum of Fine Arts / The Children's Museum
2001 - Walsall (England) - Migrations, The New Art Gallery
2002 - Bern (Switzerland) - Migrations, at Kornhaus
2002 - London (England) - Sebastião Salgado: 25 years of photography, Gallery 32
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Sebastião Salgado: Photographs, at the Gustavo Capanema Palace
2004 - Belo Horizonte MG - in Principio, at the Historical Museum Abílio Barreto
2004 - São Paulo SP - In Principio, at MAC/USP
Collective exhibitions
1977 - Geneva (Switzerland) - L'Afrique des Colères, at Conseil Ecumenique des eglises
1977 - Paris (France) - L'Afrique des Colères, at the Galerie Henri Plait
1978 - La Courneuve (France) - Les 4000 Logements de la Courneuve, at the Center Culturel Jean-Hudremont
1991 - São Paulo SP - Pirelli Collection/Masp of Photographs, at MASP
1992 - Vitória ES - Exhibition and creation by the City Hall of the Sebastião Salgado Photography Prize
1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at Kunsthaus Zürich
1994 - Curitiba PR - 4th Week of Photography of Curitiba, at the Cultural Foundation
1994 - San Francisco (United States) - Contemporary Brazilian Photography: a selection of photographs from the collection of Joaquim Paiva, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
1995 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Contemporary Brazilian Photography, at CCBB
1996 - Bogotá (Colombia) - Images of Brazil. Pirelli/Masp Photo Collection, at Casa do Brasil
1996 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
1996 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Images from Brazil. Pirelli/Masp Photo Collection at the Contemporary Art Museo of Caracas Sofía Imber
1996 - New York (United States) - Latin American Photography: Spiritual Journey, at the Museum of Brooklyn
1996 - Paris (France) - Inaugural exhibition of the European House of Photography
1998 - São Paulo SP - The Art Directors Club in Panamericana, at the Panamerican School of Art
1999 - Wolfsburg (Germany) - Brasilianische photograph 1946 bis 1998, at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
2000 - Curitiba PR - Fé, at Centro Cultural Solar do Barão
2001 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The spirit of our time, at MAM/RJ
2001 - São Paulo SP - The spirit of our time, at MAM/SP
2002 - São Paulo SP - Visions and Alumbraments: Contemporary Brazilian photography from the collection Joaquim Paiva, at Oca
2003 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Graciela Iturbide, Sebastião Salgado and Raghu Rai, at Paço Imperial
Source: Itaú Cultural
