Sebastião Salgado, Greatest Brazilian Photographer, Dies at 81

Photographer Sebastião Salgado died today (23) at the age of 81 in Paris. The information was confirmed by Instituto Terra, a non-governmental organization founded by the photographer.
"Sebastião was much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time. Alongside his life partner, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, he sowed hope where there was devastation and made the idea that environmental restoration is also a profound gesture of love for humanity flourish. His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, the power of transformative action", says the text.

Legacy and photojournalism
Author of several photo essays, books and traveling photo exhibitions, his work was marked by black and white images of landscapes, animals and people of the places he visited, on several continents, for decades.

In addition to the beauty of nature, the aesthetics of light and shadow portrayed the culture and traditions of indigenous peoples; marginalized populations; human dignity; the pain and resilience of people; working conditions; and the mass displacement of people due to poverty, repression, or war.

Biography
Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior was born in the village of Conceição do Capim, a district of the municipality of Aimoré (MG), in the Vale do Rio Doce, in 1944. However, he had been living in Paris (FR) since the end of the 1960s. In 1969, after the military regime became more severe, he and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, decided to leave Brazil and go into exile in France.

According to the Brasil Memória das Artes portal of the National Arts Foundation (Funarte), before becoming a contemporary photographer, he obtained a master's degree in economics from the University of São Paulo in 1968 and received his doctorate from the Université de Paris in 1971.

Sebastião Salgado worked as secretary of the International Coffee Organization in London between 1971 and 1973, before returning to Paris and starting to photograph professionally for the Sygma agency in 1974.

The following year, he transferred to the Gamma agency, where he began documenting the living conditions of Latin American peasants and indigenous people. This work would make him world famous.

In 1979, he left Gamma for the Magnum agency, which he eventually chaired and where he remained until 1994. In the same year, he created Amazonas Imagens with his wife.

Awards
Among the international awards, Sebastião Salgado was awarded the Eugene Smith Award (USA) in 1982.

He also won the World Press Award (Holland, 1985), the Oscar Barnack Award (Germany, 1985 and 1992), the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Award (Sweden, 1989), and the Photojournalism Award from the International Center of Photography (USA, 1990).

He has also received several other honors, including being a special representative of UNICEF and an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of the United States.

He is the author of the books Sahel: L’Homme en détresse (1986); Autres Amériques (1986); An Uncertain Grace (1990); Sebastião Salgado: As Melhores Fotos (1992); In Human Effort (1993); Workers (1993); La main de l’Homme (1993); Terra (1997); Serra Pelada (1999); Outras Américas (1999); Êxodos (2000); O Fim da Polio (2003); O Cradle da Desigualdade (2005) and África (2007).

The film O Sal da Terra follows the famous photographer and records some of his travels.

In August 2023, the Workers exhibition exhibited 150 photographs by Sebastião Salgado.

In April 2023, 15 paintings produced by the Brazilian photographer, valued at almost R$1 million, were reincorporated into the assets of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI).

Source