ID:meituyxj
He has been called the most important photographer of the 21st century, and his name is synonymous with documentary photography. "The most important photographic project should be to save humanity, put an end to wars and famines, and even change the rules of the world," he said. ”
He is the photographer Sebastio Salgado.
Sebastiao Salgado was born in 1944 on a farm in the small town of Aimorés in southeastern Brazil, where he spent his childhood in nature. In December 2016, the French Minister of Energy and Environment, Segolene Royal, awarded him the Chevalier de l'Ordre National de l'Ordre
As a young man, Salgado chose economics and made a name for himself, moving to Paris in 1969 and working as an economist at the International Coffee Association and then at the World Bank. Salgado had never formally studied photography or art until he first picked up a camera on a business trip in the '70s – and fell in love with photography as soon as he tried to see the world from the frame.
In 1973, he quit his job as an economist at the World Bank to learn photography from scratch and become a photographer. With a sense of reverence for all that is in the world, he has traveled to more than 120 countries with his camera, and his photographs have been published in countless magazines and books, and he has held traveling photo exhibitions around the world.
Salgado explored a variety of genres of photography before finding his passion for documentary photography, known for documenting the lives of the underprivileged in impoverished areas.
In 1979, Salgado joined Magnum Photos. In 1994, he and his wife, Lilia, founded their own photo agency, Amazonas Images, in Paris. His work chronicles the lives of people around the world, especially those who search for hope, beauty and strength in desperate circumstances, and always brings shock. Gold miners in Brazil in 1986
In 1986, Salgado went to the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil to shoot. He saw a scene of 50,000 gold diggers crowded into the huge mines, carrying bags of heavy ore and climbing fifty or sixty trips on improvised wooden ladders in a day, all in danger of falling to death or being injured by others. The workers here do not all come from poor backgrounds, but come from all walks of life.
Salgado saw the greed for wealth in the depths of human nature: what really enslaves people is the bag on their backs, which may be nothing but dirt or gold – and that moment determines whether you win independence and freedom. Once a person embarks on the gold rush, there is no turning back.
In 1991, there was a fire in the Kuwaiti oil field
During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq deliberately set fire to oil wells when it was retreating from Kuwait. 500 mines burned together, turning the desert into a sea of fire, and the smoke was so thick that it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night. It was the largest oil disaster in history, and it took eight months to extinguish it with the help of various countries.
Salgado came to the front line with his camera, and the sound of a violent explosion caused him to be deaf at one point. Despite this, he postponed his supposed departure several times and followed the firefighters every day to reveal these shocking images to the world. And this land was once home to the wonderful Kuwait Royal Gardens, and Salgado lamented that it was like people opening the gates of hell, and when people returned here, they would find that what was once paradise had become hell.
1994 Rwandan genocide refugee camp
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda in Africa was an organized genocide of the Hutu against the Tutsi and Hutu moderates. The massacre was supported by the Rwandan government, army and media. In just over two months, nearly 1 million people died, more than 20 percent of the country's population at the time. This massacre, which took place at the end of the 20th century in modern civilized society, nakedly showed the ferocity of human nature.
Salgado went to the refugee camps, and cholera and other diseases broke out. He saw that human life was as humble as an ant, and death became a daily sight to be experienced every day. "Everybody should look at these images and see what happened to our kind," Salgado said. There is a beast of the most ferocious in the world, and it is called man. ”
After leaving Rwanda, he also fell into a state of mental breakdown: "I saw so much darkness, and when I left here, I was very sick. I wasn't infected with any disease, but my heart and soul were sick. ”
As a documentary photographer, Salgado insists on documenting profound facts in black and white photographs, creating with a deep humanitarian spirit. Documentary has its cruelty, and he admits that "the only ugliness of photography is the pain that the person being photographed is experiencing." But he wanted to awaken the "empathy" of his fellow kind, the condemnation of certain sectors that caused the suffering, which was Salgado's conscience. After looking at his photographs, the viewer seems to be struck by reality – the unbelievable yet extremely real images that make people question their original perception of the world.
Salgado's approach to photography is consistent with Magnum Photos' style, pursuing the "decisive moment" as much as his predecessors. Salgado used to carry three cameras with different lenses with him, saving time on changing lenses just for the momentary capture. At the same time, he also strives for the depth of this ephemeral moment, which he dislikes, and he prefers to live with the people he subjects in order to achieve a deeper expression.
While studying at the University of São Paulo, Salgado fell in love with 17-year-old Lilia at first sight, and soon the two were married. In the 60s, Brazil was in the midst of a dictatorship, and in 1969 the couple decided to move to Paris.
Lélia Wanick Salgado studied architecture and master's degree in urban planning at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the University of Paris VIII, becoming a professional urban planner. In the 70s, she gave birth to two sons in Paris. Seeing Salvagado's talent in photography, she boldly supported her husband to give up his well-paid career as an economist and cross over to become a photographer. The two spent almost all their savings to buy photographic equipment, and everything started from scratch.
During Salgado's documentary photography, he was often not heard from for months. Lilia silently takes care of the family by herself, works and studies at the same time, and recommends her husband's works to magazines and photo agencies. In those days, when communication was not developed, the couple kept in touch by letters. Influenced by her husband, Lilia began to move into photography in the 80s, working for the photo publications Photo Revue and Longue Vue. She then served as director of Magnum Gallery, curating more than 20 exhibitions.
In 1994, Salgado and his wife Lilia founded Amazonas Images in Paris, with Lilia as its president, specializing in Salgado's photographs. Over the years, Lilia has been assisting her husband in publishing catalogues and curating film exhibitions. The husband and wife sang with each other in work and life, sublimating the small love between the two into a big love that cares for the world.
"There is one beast in the world that is extremely terrifying, and that is us humans." Humans have treated their own kind with cruelty and wantonly harmed the environment, and the jungles have been destroyed and people's homes have been razed to the ground during the war. Salgado has visited Africa 16 times and has seen too many displacements, disease outbreaks, and separations. With a large number of immigrants and refugees in Europe and mountains of corpses in Africa, Salgado is increasingly sinking into the deepest despair of humanity. With such desperation, Salvador returned home.
The farmstead of his childhood was a dusty village due to perennial logging and drought. At the suggestion of his wife, Lilia, the family started planting trees on the farm again. They rallied their partners and raised funds to form the non-profit Instituto Terra. The Terra Institute has been named a Private Natural Heritage Reserve in Brazil and is a model for ecological education.
Starting with the survival rate of only 40% of the seedlings sown in the first seeds, it took more than a decade of inexperienced efforts to restore the land to its original subtropical rainforest ecology. More than 2 million trees have grown, more than 1,000 new springs have appeared, and wildlife has returned to the homeland. This experience taught Salgado that the destruction of nature is not irreversible. As long as human beings cherish nature, nature has a miraculous ability to repair itself, and the feedback it brings will be beyond imagination. The success of the Terra Institute has also given Salgardo confidence. He decided to move from a social documentary photographer to an unfamiliar field of landscape and animal photography.
After that, Salgado began the filming program of Genesis. If it is a miracle that he rebuilt the jungle with his hands, then "Genesis", which took eight years to write, is an epic. Since 2004, Salgado has traveled to the corners of the world, conducting dozens of expeditions that lasted several months and lasted for eight years. The album was published by Taschen Books in 2013 and distributed globally in six languages. This album is a tribute to Mother Earth, a rediscovery of humanity, a soulful song of dialogue with God. Salgado had lost hope in humanity during his years of social documentary filming. But in the field of nature photography, he saw the beauty of the Creator's intention at the beginning of the creation of the world, and the hope of regenerating the earth.
"The Genesis series is an epic expedition that Salgado completed over the course of eight years. In the mountains, in the desert and in the ocean, the people and animals, the land and the life of those who have escaped the imprint of modern society are recorded. His work presents a planet that has so far remained in its pristine state. About 46% of the planet remains in its original state. Salgado reminded: 'We must maintain this presence. Salgado's Genesis project shows our beautiful planet and what people need to do is reverse the damage done to it and protect its future. - Time Magazine
In Salgado's eyes, human beings are the salt of the earth, the essence of the world, the soul of the world, and deserve to be respected. Humanitarianism was his starting point. "We live in a time that is crucial for the planet, and photographs are a way to share this historic moment. In a new light, our planet is so powerful. ”
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