SEBASTIÃO SALGADO
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO AMAZÔNIA
SUNDARAM TAGORE NEW YORK
JUNE 15 – JULY 15, 2023
Whether viewed from the sky or on the ground, Amazonia has always filled me with awe.
Neither words nor photographs can fully convey the sensation of being overwhelmed by the sheer power and majesty of nature. Just as unforgettable is the feeling of intimacy I experienced when spending weeks on end with different tribes. Through them, the forest and rivers took on a new meaning, one that offered life and sustenance.
— Sebastião Salgado" “
Photo © Sebastião Salgado
AMAZÔNIA
We are honored to share images from Amazônia, world-renowned photographer and artist-activist Sebastião Salgado’s most recent series and perhaps most personal project to date.
For more than five decades, Salgado has made it his life’s work to document humankind and nature on photographic expeditions around the world. For this series, he traveled deep into the heart of the Amazon, capturing the unspoiled beauty of the world’s most biodiverse region and its inhabitants in stunning back-and-white images. Salgado, who was born in Aimorés, Brazil, in 1944, initiated the project with the hope that it would serve as a catalyst for raising awareness of the need to protect the Amazon and its indigenous population.
Images from Amazônia have traveled to cities across the globe, including São Paulo, Rio
de Janeiro, Rome, Paris, London, Manchester and Avignon. In the fall of 2022, the California Science Center in Los Angeles hosted the North American premiere, presenting more than 200 large-scale photographs suspended throughout the museum’s 13,000 square feet. The exhibition is scheduled to be shown throughout 2023 in Milan, Zurich, Madrid and Brussels.
Photographed during forty-eight trips to the Amazon forest, the series documents vast and remote realities, including the daily lives of indigenous people such as the Yanomami, Yawanawá and Zo’é. Salgado, who has been engaging with native tribes of the Amazon region since the mid-1980s, often lives with his subjects for months, breaking down barriers by immersing himself in their environments. The resulting images are infused with empathy and respect.
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Left: Sebastião Salgado in Indonesia, 2008.
Shot over decades, the images have become a visual archive, documenting receding water levels and plumes of billowing smoke as the region continues to face threats from logging, mining, dam building, cattle and soybean farming, and climate change. With deeply compelling narratives, Amazônia may be photojournalistic in nature, but technically and compositionally, the images stand on their own as masterful works of art.
We will also be showing select work from Magnum Opus , Salgado’s special series of fifty platinum-palladium prints representing some of his most powerful series, including Amazônia , Genesis and Workers . These rare prints, crafted in Belgium by the printer Salto Ulbeek, were recently presented in a selling exhibition curated by Lélia Wanick Salgado at Sotheby’s. It was the largest curated solo exhibition of photography in Sotheby's history, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Instituto Terra, the Salgados’ nonprofit devoted to reforestation and environmental education. Sales raised more than one million dollars for the foundation.
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Right: Sebastião Salgado in Namibia, 2005.
Photo © Lélia Deluiz Wanick
Kuikuro warriors, Xingu Indigenous Territory, state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, 2005 gelatin silver print, 60 x 90 inches/152.4 x 228.6 cm
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Shaman Ângelo Barcelos, Yanomami Indigenous Territory, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2014 gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Valley of Javari Indigenous Territory, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 1998 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
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Young Hatiri bathes in a backwater of the Pretão stream, Suruwahá Indigenous Territory, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2017 gelatin silver print, 68 x 50 inches/172.7 x 127 cm
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Fishing using timbó (Derris ellíptica), in the Pretão stream, Suruwahá Indigenous Territory, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2017 gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
Manda, daughter of Jeré (Yawakashahu) Yawanawá, Rio Gregório Indigenous Territory, state of Acre, Brazil, 2016 gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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At daybreak, Waurá Indians travel by canoe to collect the “waiting net,” Xingu Indigenous Territory, state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, 2005 gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Adão Yawanawá in a headdress of eagle feathers, village of Nova Esperança, Rio Gregório Indigenous Territory, state of Acre, Brazil, 2016 gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Txitxopi, Ituí River area, valley of Javari Korubo Indigenous Territory, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2017 gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm
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Luísa, Kampa do Rio Amônea Indigenous Territory, state of Acre, Brazil, 2016 gelatin silver print, 68 x 50 inches/172.7 x 127 cm
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Yara Asháninka, Kampa do Rio Amônea Indigenous Territory, state of Acre, 2016 gelatin silver print, 50 x 36 inches/127 x 91.4 cm
Miró (Viná) Yawanawá, Rio Gregório Indigenous Territory, state of Acre, Brazil, 2016 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
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Green-winged macaws, Jaú National Park, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019 gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Heavy rain on the Juruá River, Tefé area – Lower Juruá, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2009 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches//61 x 88.9 cm
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Anavilhanas National Park, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2009 gelatin silver print, 68 x 50 inches/172.7 x 127 cm
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The backwater of the Rio Negro, Anavilhanas National Park, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2009 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
Parima River Falls, Yanomami Indigenous Territory, Parima Forest Reserve, on the border with Venezuela, state of Roraima, Brazil, 2018 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
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Jaú River, Jaú National Park, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019 gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Rain on the Marié Mirim mountain range, Yanomami Indigenous Territory, municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2018 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
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Aracá State Park, El Dorado Falls (background) and Desabamento Falls (foreground), state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019 gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches/61 x 50.8 cm
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An igapó, with many lianas hanging from the treetops, Jaú River, Jaú National Park, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019 gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
River landscape, estuary of the Jaú River, Jaú National Park, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019 gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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The Demini River, Yanomami Indigenous Territory, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019 gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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The paraná connecting the Rio Negro with the Cujuni River, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2019 gelatin silver print, 60 x 90 inches/152.4 x 228.6 cm
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Photo © Renato Amoroso 2019
SEBASTIÃO SALGADO
Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944 in Brazil. He lives in Paris, France. Having studied economics, Salgado began his career as a professional photographer in 1973 in Paris. He worked with various agencies, including Sygma, Gamma and Magnum Photos, until 1994, when he and Lélia Wanick Salgado formed Amazonas Images, created exclusively for his work. Today, the agency no longer exists and this structure has become their studio.
Salgado’s work has been the subject of many books, including Other Americas (1986), Sahel: l'homme en détresse (1986), Sahel: el fin del camino (1988), Workers (1993), Terra: Struggle of the Landless (1997), Migrations: Humanity in Transition and The Children: Refugees and Migrants (2000), Africa (2007), Genesis (2013), The Scent of a Dream (2015), Kuwait, A Desert on Fire (2016), GOLD (2019), and Amazônia (2021). Touring exhibitions of this work have been and continue to be presented throughout the world. In 2013, the book De ma terra à la terre (From my land to the planet), a narrative account of Salgado’s life and career was published. In 2014, the documentary film The Salt of the Earth, directed by Wim Wenders and Jualiano Ribeiro Salgado, was released.
Sebastião Salgado has been honored with numerous distinctions and photographic prizes. He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In April 2016 Salgado was elected member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France, for the seat previously occupied by Lucien Clergue. In 2021, he received The Praemium Imperiale Award, Japan Art Association, Japan. Lélia Wanick Salgado and Sebastião Salgado have worked since the 1990s on the restoration of a portion of the Atlantic Forest in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. In 1998 they succeeded in turning this land into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra, dedicated to reforestation, conservation and environmental education.
SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERIES
The gallery has been representing established and emerging artists from around the world since 2000, showing work that is aesthetically and intellectually rigorous, infused with humanism and art historically significant. The gallery specializes in paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations with a strong emphasis on materiality. Our artists cross cultural and national boundaries, synthesizing Western visual language with forms, techniques and philosophies from Asia, the Subcontinent and the Middle East. We show this work alongside important work by underrepresented women from the New York School. The gallery also has a robust photography program that includes some of the world’s most noted photographers.
NEW YORK
542 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001 • +1 212 677 4520 gallery@sundaramtagore.com
SINGAPORE
5 Lock Road 01-05, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933 • +65 6694 3378 singapore@sundaramtagore.com
LONDON
4 Cromwell Place, Gallery 8, London, SW7 2JE • +44 (0)20 8057 0789 gallery@sundaramtagore.com
President and Curator: Sundaram Tagore
Senior Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey
Director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor
Director, New York: Kathryn McSweeney
Associate Director, New York: Eric Chelman
Senior Registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso
Designer: Russell Whitehead
Editorial support: Kieran Doherty
WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM
Text © 2023 Sundaram Tagore Gallery
Images © Sebastião Salgado
All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover: Rain falling on the Marié Mirim mountain range, Yanomami Indigenous Territory, municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, state of Amazonas, Brazil, 2018 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm