SEBASTIÃ0 SALGADO TH E WOR LD TH ROUG H H IS EYES
It is a great pleasure for The Royal Photographic Society of Thailand (RPST) to have been given the opportunity to organize the first major Sebastião Salgado exhibition in the country. Salgado’s photographs are not only exceptionally beautiful but his recent works have also made a strong impact and raised awareness about pressing issues in the environment that we all face today. RPST created The Master Series program in 2014 to educate and inspire younger generations about contemporary photography. Leading professional international photographers are invited to exhibit their works and give lectures in Bangkok. We are deeply honored that a world-renowned photographer such as Sebastião Salgado has offered his expertise for this purpose and has personally selected the photographs for our third Master Series exhibition. As a non-profit organization, RPST could not have done this without the generous support of our sponsors Thai Beverage Public Company Limited and Thai Airways International. I wish to thank everyone involved at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre and Sundaram Tagore Gallery for their kind collaboration that has contributed to realizing this project and making it one of the most important, exciting photographic exhibitions this country has seen. Nitikorn Kraivixien President The Royal Photographic Society of Thailand
FOREWORD I first became acquainted with Thailand’s vibrant art scene through university friends who introduced me to some of the most inventive artists in the region. Since the nineties, my travels to Thailand have given me a chance to delve deeper into the country and spend time with several artists in their studios. It has been fascinating to see the cultural sphere flourish into what it has become today. Over the years, we have held numerous exhibitions for Thai artists in our galleries in Hong Kong, Singapore and New York, exposing them to diverse audiences. As an organization, we have a long history of mounting historic exhibitions across the world with artists whose work and practice transcends national borders such as Frontiers Reimagined at the 2015 Venice Biennale and The World We Live In: Through the Lens of Contemporary Photography at Ayala Museum in Manila in 2016. Given our interest in inter-cultural exchange, we were delighted when the opportunity arose to mount this exhibition in collaboration with The Royal Photographic Society of Thailand (RPST) in Bangkok. I am grateful for the efforts of our Thai colleagues at RPST and Bangkok Art and Culture Centre as well as Sebastião Salgado’s studio in Paris. I would also like to thank Ms. Fon Windsor-Clive, Mr. Bheema Jotikabukkana, Mr. Surin Banyatpiyaphod, Ms. Luckana Kunavichayanont and Mr. Nitikorn Kraivixien who made this project possible. At the heart of the gallery’s work is the idea of harnessing art and culture as a vehicle to bring people together. I can’t think of another artist who could better fulfill this mission than Sebastião Salgado who has a truly global vision. Each and every one of his photographs carries a palpable sense of humanity that reminds us of the immense power of art. Sundaram Tagore
THE IMPERFECT PEARL: THE WORLDLY VIEW OF SEBASTIÃO SALGADO MARIUS KWINT
It takes time to find a purpose. When photography was being invented in Europe in the early nineteenth century, it was, as the historian Kelley Wilder has noted, viewed neither as an art, nor as a medium for reportage, and certainly not a popular pastime, but as a scientific technique of interest chiefly to men of learning and private means.1 The term “photography” was coined by the English astronomer and polymath Sir John Herschel around 1839, combining the Greek words for light (fos) and drawing or writing (grafo), but the equipment was still expensive and tricky to use. Only thanks to its subsequent development by entrepreneurs, professionals, amateurs and populace, did photography become the panoply of visual practices that we know now, the stuff of cultural modernity and post-modernity. Photography as social and cultural practice has transformed behaviors, facilitating new industries and social identities and sometimes hastening the fall of entire political regimes by documenting their misdeeds. Since the invention of the x-ray in the 1890s, we have even been able to harness the invisible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to make images
of previously unimaginable worlds, from the most distant reaches of the universe to the deepest molecular structures of our bodies. The cultural and economic importance of the camera and its derivatives is largely down to their capacity to capture an objective reality, to create evidence, to bear witness in some way, to show something that actually was. Having taken up a camera professionally when he was already well advanced in his career as a development economist, Sebastião Salgado has become one of the great witnesses of our times. He is probably the most famous photographer alive, and in many respects has surpassed his towering twentieth-century forbears, figures including American photographers Ansel Adams, Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange, whose monumental landscapes or reportage of toiling and distressed humanity have likewise become iconic elements of world visual heritage, in some cases spurring on social and environment reform. In contradistinction to these examples, however, and to nearly
Left: Brooks Range, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA, 2009, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 7
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all his contemporaries, Salgado has conceived his subject matter with a global purview from the outset, transcending national interests and territories. The themes he has tackled in his decade-long projects−workers, migration and the environment−are critical to the past, present and future of the earth and its finite resources, and fully deserving of their sometime biblical titles, Exodus and Genesis. His concern with populations on the move in the 1990s seems especially prophetic as the political fallout of these upheavals owing to armed conflict, environmental degradation, poverty and inequality, begins to affect even the West in its bubble of relative affluence and security.
(also known as Exodus), Other Americas and Genesis series present in this exhibition, give a sense of the range, depth and volume of his practice.2 His lucid introductory essays and accompanying booklets of detailed, informative notes mean that the photos can be displayed free of individual captions, representing the world and its phenomena, he writes, “as a mosaic, the mosaic presented by nature itself.”3
Salgado is known for the technical brilliance and dramatic style of his work (the graphitic monochrome; the classically structured compositions; the attention to form and texture; the orchestration of the sublime) but perhaps above all the burning desire for social and environmental justice that shines through every shot. It is important to recognize the extraordinary level of meticulous research, planning, endurance, daring fieldwork, and subsequent production that underpins these achievements. This work he has shared with his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, and other long-term collaborators including his son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. His approach to his art testifies to his rigorous academic training and the integrity of his ethical, political and intellectual position, which is Marxist in theory and broadly social-democratic in practice. While the power of a Salgado photograph can only be fully appreciated displayed to its finest in a gallery, his magnificent books, including the Workers, Migrations
I was a macro-economist, a political economist, so I had all these tools in my mind. I had the capacity of analysis, the capacity of synthesis, to situate what I was seeing. The fact that I came from an underdeveloped country, Brazil, with all these social problems, was crucial. My first series, Workers, was [created] because there were huge transitions going on because of globalization. We were being completely transformed. And photography is one expression of all these variables together.4
Salgado is a warm and passionate communicator. When I ask him about the creative significance of his economics background, he replies, “It was the biggest part of my life history.”
Salgado speaks briefly of the influence of his rural upbringing in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where he was born in 1944. The exuberance of nature and the style of the local churches and shrines endowed him with a sensibility that he calls baroque. “I come from the most baroque part of the country; the most baroque part of the world,”
Salgado declares. The term “baroque,” of course, properly refers to the ornate, dramatic style of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European-derived art, architecture and music, often associated with the Counter-Reformation against Protestantism. It comes from barroco, the Portuguese word for a rough or imperfect pearl (and Portuguese is the national language of Brazil). “Everything I do comes from inside,” he continues, “my experience; my situation: I am this person.” The award-winning 2014 film about Salgado’s life and work, The Salt of the Earth (made by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and the distinguished German director Wim Wenders) shows the successful results of his and Lélia’s re-forestation work on the former cattle ranch of his parents, where he happily grew up, but which had since become arid and denuded because of climate change and environmental degradation. This is now the site of the Instituto Terra (Earth Institute), which they founded to promote and develop sustainable development and ecological restoration programs. 5 He is also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. While some younger photographers have fully embraced color, Salgado retains his signature monochrome, with strong contrasts that concentrate the eye on the relationships of form and structure, while making clear the artifice of any picture. He makes a humane virtue of the camera’s risky talent for objectification. Like the surface of an imperfect pearl, the face of the earth can be beautiful, but it is naturally indifferent to the fate of human and non-human denizens. Bad things can happen under a spectacular sky, amid bucolic mountain
valleys, or lush forest glades. The English poet W.H. Auden saw a comparable truth in the works of the old master painters in his poem Musée des Beaux Arts. Writing in 1938, and filled with foreboding of the Second World War, Auden was inspired by Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1560, attributed to Pieter Bruegel) in the eponymous museum in Brussels, Belgium. He began: About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along . . .6 Auden goes onto to say how “the sun shone / As it had to” on the doomed figure of the boy Icarus who, according to Greek myth, attached feathers to his arms with wax in order to fly and escape Crete, but ignored his father’s advice and went too high, so that the sun melted his wings and he plunged to his death in the sea. Bruegel’s scene is nevertheless a pastoral idyll where the world goes about its daily business and Icarus’ fate is a mere detail. Albeit in the face of overwhelming disaster rather than isolated misfortune, Salgado has also spoken about encountering shockingly blasé attitudes towards death. Of the central African refugee camps following the Rwandan genocide in 1994, he said: “I saw one man walking with a bundle in his arms, chatting to another man. When he arrived at the mass grave, he tossed the inert body of his baby onto the pile and walked away, still chatting.”7
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Orphanage attached to the hospital at Kibumba Number One camp, Goma, Zaire, 1994, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm
Salgado’s work achieved much of its international profile through high quality spreads in the mainstream picture press, including Rolling Stone (USA), Paris Match (France), Stern (Germany), El País Semanal (Spain) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil). However, these publications have drastically declined since the 1990s in the face of aggressive press monopolies adhering to lifestyle-centered marketing, and the more recent rise of digital and social media. The effect has been to supplant serious photo essays with consumer gewgaws and celebrity tittle-tattle. Realism has to some extent gone out of fashion; narcissism is the order of the day as online media are tailored to personal predilections and group prejudices: the so-called “echo chambers” of the post-modern media Babel. Back in 1997, the beginnings of these changes and the apparent decline of photo-reportage prompted a significant essay concentrating on the example of Salgado by the art historian Julian Stallabrass in the British journal New Left Review, noting and to some extent regretting the redefinition of the genre as fine art fit for galleries.8 Salgado himself is more pragmatic and less bothered about pigeonholing. “To this extent, I have been a victim of my time,” he half-jokes when we discuss these shifts, “but I keep working. I started to publish in the books, and then galleries started in my life. Things went in that direction.” He is highly appreciative of his working relationship with Sundaram Tagore, who shares a common humanitarian insight into the plight of refugees, Tagore having been affected as a youth in Calcutta by the influx of Bangladeshis escaping the terrible War of Independence in 1971. “Sundaram is one of the most serious and dedicated people I know,” Salgado says. “He works from the heart.”
Along with other prominent “photographers of conscience” (in the somewhat backhanded phrase of the late American writer Susan Sontag), Salgado’s work has not escaped reproach. 9 Some have alleged that his imagery aestheticizes or commodifies human suffering, not least by appearing in prestigious art galleries. But much of this argument misses the point that Salgado documents the force of life, endurance and survival much more than he does abject pain or despair. Salgado commits himself not only to bringing crying injustices to public attention, but also to commemorating the unsung heroism of keeping body and soul together that is routine for the majority of the world’s population. Moreover, even in extreme situations, there is no evidence that Salgado ever regards his subjects as anything other than equals. They overwhelmingly remain dignified, in spite of all. Whether with humans or other animals, he often captures the moment of eye contact, when the presence of a photographer is clocked. We, the relatively safe and comfortable beholders, are invited to empathize, to imagine the feelings behind the faces, but not just so that we can enjoy noble pathos. In one example from his Exodus series, in the present exhibition, three sick little refugees gaze up from under their shared blanket in the hospital orphanage at the choleraravaged Kikumba Number One camp in Zaire (now Congo) in 1994 after the neighboring Rwandan genocide. Only one of them would survive, Salgado recalls sadly in the film The Salt of the Earth, and it was the one in the middle whose eyes could still flash wide with a glimmer of indignation.
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In a similar spirit of active realism, Salgado’s epic Genesis project, photographing the world untouched by modernity, is a hymn to what we stand to lose if environmental pillage, destruction and pollution are allowed to continue, especially at their now alarmingly accelerating rates. For example, in this exhibition, his panorama of summer snowmelt streams in the Brooks Range in Alaska is more than a study of the fluvial forces that have sculpted the landscape into beautiful, pristine wilderness.10 With rivers, clouds and distant gullies of snow, the picture represents all three natural states of water (liquid, gas and solid); the resulting streams flow south to join the great Yukon River and thence the Bering Sea. As industrial civilization continues to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the loss of glaciers, snow and polar ice caps around the world is already causing sea levels to rise at 3.4 millimeters per year.11 Over the last ten years, arctic sea ice has receded by some 800,000 square kilometers. In November 2016, air temperature at the North Pole was 10 degrees Celsius above average for that time of year.12 And the full effects of having atmospheric carbon dioxide now at over 400 parts per million (far higher than our species has ever experienced) are yet to play out. That humanitarian and ecological values may still be so widely valued in photography is perhaps heartening at a time of economic retrenchment and political reaction, with apparently declining supplies of human sympathy around the world. Many would say that demagogues and charlatans are now riding high on the backs of electorates who seem to want to pull up the drawbridge, regardless of
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the plight of refugees and migrants, the health of the planet, or even their own socio-economic interests. “Can we claim ‘compassion fatigue’ when we show no sign of consumption fatigue,” Salgado has written, to which the moral answer is of course no.13 He and I discuss the counter-Enlightenment unfolding around the world, not least in my adoptive homeland, England, where Brexit astonishingly “took Britain out of the most progressive grouping of countries in the history of the planet” and threatens the entire European Union with a succession of xenophobic nationalist leaders. “It was a misimpression that these societies were liberal and sophisticated,” Salgado says, noting similar patterns in the recent change of government in Brazil (“a coup”) and the vote to reject the peace deal in Colombia, to say nothing of the election of a right-wing populist president in the US. It is perhaps best to leave reflection on these developments to Salgado, who is his own most honest critic in recognizing the political limitations of photographic art and reportage. What he wrote by way of introduction to Migrations in 1999 is all the more urgent today: But is it enough simply to be informed? Are we condemned to be largely spectators? Can we affect the course of events? I have no answers, [though] I believe that some answers must exist, that humanity is capable of understanding, even controlling, the political, economic and social forces that we have set loose across the globe…We cannot [remain indifferent]…We have to create a new regimen of coexistence.14
Salgado is no armchair idealist: he practices what he preaches. Often at considerable personal risk, he has dedicated the later part of his career to documenting the effects of these political, economic and social forces. Together with Lélia and his team at Amazonas Images, he has also ensured that as many people as possible are able to see what he has so memorably witnessed, indeed helping humanity to understand its own situation. Photography has found a renewed greatness and nobility of purpose in his hands; a purpose that has demanded the highest virtues: from physical fortitude and courage to aesthetic sensibility; and from organizational adeptness to profound sympathy. However, as Sebastião Salgado’s books make clear, this is not a solo endeavor, but one founded on partnerships with his family, colleagues and international collaborators, including publishers and curators. Crucially, too, it is based on respectful relationships with his photographic subjects and his audiences, not least through his willingness to attend and speak at exhibitions and openings. This exhibition, the first major presentation of his work in Thailand, forms a significant step in that ongoing journey. Endnotes 1. Kelly Wilder, Photography and Science (London: Reaktion, 2009) 2. Sebastião Salgado, Migrations (New York: Aperture, 2000); Salgado, Exodus (Cologne: Taschen, 2016 [new ed.]); Salgado, Genesis, ed. Lélia Wanick Salgado (Cologne: Taschen, 2013); Salgado, Other Americas (New York: Aperture, 2015 [first pub. 1986]) 3. Salgado, Genesis, 8 4. Salgado, conversation with the author, November 15, 2016 (and
subsequent quotations unless otherwise cited) 5. See www.institutoterra.org (accessed 19 December, 2016) 6. W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts” (December 1938), in W. H. Auden: Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber, 1991), 179 7. Salgado, Exodus, 14 8. Julian Stallabrass, “Sebastião Salgado and Fine Art Photojournalism,” New Left Review I/223 (May-June 1997), 131 9. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2004), esp. ch. 5. For a measured critique of Sontag’s book (though not mentioning Salgado), see Judith Butler, “Torture and the Ethics of Photography,” Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 25, no. 6 (December 2007), 951-966, accessed December 19, 2016, doi: 10.1068/d2506jb. A persuasive defense of Salgado’s integrated ethical practice is Thomas K. Rudel, “Images, Ideology, and Praxis in the Environmental Movement: Sebastião Salgado’s Genesis Project,” Sociological Forum 26.2 (June 2011), 431-7, accessed October 9, 2016, doi: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2011.01250.x 10. Salgado, Genesis, 326-7, and accompanying notes, 21 11. “Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. Facts. Sea Level,” NASA, last updated December 13, 2016, http://climate. nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/ 12. “Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis,” National Snow and Ice Data Center, December 6, 2016 13. Salgado, Exodus, 14 14. Salgado, Exodus, 14-5
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GENESIS
Nenets, Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, Russia, 2011, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Algeria, 2009, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 18
Sand dunes, Tadrart, South of Djanet, Algeria, 2009, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 19
Nenets, Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, Russia, 2011, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 20
Nenets, Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, Russia, 2011, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 21
A Himba group, Kaokoland, Namibia, 2005, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 22
Mursi women, Ethiopia, 2007, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 23
Iceberg between Paulet Island and the South Shetland Islands on the Weddell Sea, Antarctic Peninsula, 2005, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm
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The Anavilhanas, Amazonas, Brazil, 2009, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 26
Lake on Wolverine Plateau near Kluane National Park, Canada, 2011, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 27
Libya, 2009, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 28
Madagascar palm, Tsingy of Bemaraha National Park, Madagascar, 2010, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 29
Teureum, leader of the Mentawai clan preparing a filter for sago, Siberut Island, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2008, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 30
A group of Waurรก fishing in a lake, Upper Xingu, Mato Grosso, Brazil, 2005, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 31
Zo’é tribe, Pará, Brazil, 2009, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 32
Zo’é women color their bodies using a red fruit called urucum, Pará, Brazil, 2009, gelatin silver print, 60 x 81 inches/152.4 x 205.7 cm 33
A Mentawai youth climbs a tree to collect durian fruit, Siberut Island, West Sumatra, Indonesia, 2008, gelatin silver print, 60 x 81 inches/152.4 x 205.7 cm 34
Young Kamayurรก girl, Upper Xingu, Mato Grosso, Brazil, 2005, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/88.9 x 61 cm 35
Marine iguana, Galรกpagos Islands, Ecuador, 2004, gelatin silver print, 68 x 50 inches/172.7 x 127 cm 36
A San hunter holding his catch, a korhaan bird, Botswana, 2008, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 37
Kafue National Park, Zambia, 2010, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Chinstrap penguins on an iceberg located between Zavodovski and Visokoi islands, South Sandwich Islands, 2009, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 40
Weddell seals on an iceberg, Antarctic Peninsula, 2005, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 41
Zavodovski Island, South Sandwich Islands, 2009, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 42
Chinstrap penguins on Deception Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, 2005, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/88.9 x 61 cm 43
Kafue National Park, Zambia, 2010, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 44
Botswana, 2007, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 45
Tolbachik and Kamen Volcanoes, Kamchatka, Russia, 2006, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Confluence of the Colorado and the Little Colorado Rivers, Arizona, USA, 2010, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 48
Brooks Range, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA, 2009, gelatin silver print, 68 x 50 inches/172.7 x 127 cm 49
Sing Sing Festival performer, Mount Hagen, Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, 2008, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/88.9 x 61 cm 50
Sing Sing Festival Performers of Paya, Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, 2008, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 51
Leopard in the Barab River Valley, Damaraland, Namibia, 2005, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Southern right whale, ValdĂŠs Peninsula, Argentina, 2004, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 54
Southern elephant seal calves at Saint Andrews Bay, South Georgia, 2009, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 55
Sea lions, Santiago Island, Galรกpagos, Ecuador, 2004, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 56
Bryce Canyon National Park during a snowstorm, Utah, USA, 2010, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 57
Plains zebra, Okavango Delta, Botswana, 2007, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 58
Kafue National Park, Zambia, 2010, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/88.9 x 61 cm 59
Bighorn Creek, Kluane National Park, Canada, 2011, gelatin silver print, 60 x 81 inches/152.4 x 205.7 cm
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EXODUS
Newly constructed building in Sixth of October, one of the new towns of Cairo, Greater Cairo, Egypt, 1997, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 64
Beach of Vung Tau, formerly Cap Saint Jacques, where the majority of the boat people departed, Vietnam, 1995, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm 65
Migrants from Uttar Pradesh working in the Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat clothes washing center, Bombay, India, 1995, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 66
Boys fleeing to avoid being forced to fight in the civil war and heading for Kenya, Southern Sudan, 1993, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 67
Taliban tank heading north from Kabul to join the fight against Commander Massoud’s troops, Afghanistan, 1996, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 68
Illegal migrants traveling on wagons rather than in between train cars for safety, Mexico, 1998, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm 69
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In July 1983 Iraqi soldiers took away all the men of several villages, they were never seen again. The families still wait for their return, Beharke, Iraqi Kurdistan, 1997, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm
Inside a food distribution area run by French humanitarian organization Action Contre La Faim, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1996, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
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Church Gate Station, Bombay, India, 1995, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm
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The Kibeho camp for returning refugees from Zaire and Burundi, Rwanda, 1995, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 74
Young boys who fled southern Sudan to avoid recruitment into armed forces at a school backed by the United Nations, Kakuma camp, Kenya, 1993, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Nahr el-Bared, Palestinian refugee camp, Region of Tripoli, Lebanon, 1998, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 76
Some 430 children live in the FEBEM (Foundation for Child Welfare) center who were either abandoned, or delivered by parents no longer able to care for them, SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil, 1996, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Returning Mozambican refugee crossing the half-destroyed Dona Ana Bridge above the Zambezi River, Mutarara, Mozambique, 1994, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm
Sassoon Docks, Bombay, India, 1995, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 79
Brighton Ballet Theater of the School of Russian Ballet, Brooklyn, New York, USA, 1994, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm 80
120 refugees living in a train at the Ivankovo train station, Croatia, 1994, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm 81
Tietê bus terminal, São Paulo, Brazil, 1996, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Jade Maiwand Avenue, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1996, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 84
The mosque of Istiqlal which was then the largest in the world, Jakarta, Indonesia, 1996, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 85
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Women carry their goods to the market of Chimbote while the men have migrated to the cities, Region of Chimborazo, Ecuador, 1998, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/ 91.4 x 127 cm
Beach of Vung Tau, formerly Cap Saint Jacques, from where the majority of the boat people departed, Vietnam, 1995, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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A Moro Islamic Liberation Front peasant fighter in Mindanao where guerrilla groups occupy portions of the land, Cotabato, Mindanao Island, Philippines, 1999, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
Returning Mozambican refugees pause near the Dona Ana Bridge above the River Zambezi, Mutarara, Mozambique, 1994, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Food distribution area for the Rwandan refugee camp of Kibumba, Goma, Zaire, 1994, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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Scene near the Marubo Maronal village, Amazonas, Brazil, 1998, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 92
Region of Chimborazo, Ecuador, 1998, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/88.9 x 61 cm 93
Refugees were attacked by the Croatian population as they left the Krajina region, Serbia, 1995, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24Â inches/50.8 x 61 cm 94
Poor people sleep on Marine Drive, waiting for the morning’s food distribution, Bombay, India, 1995, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 95
Wholesale fruit and vegetable market at Byculla, Bombay, India, 1995, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
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Rwandan refugee camp of Benako, Tanzania, 1994, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 98
Rwandan refugee camp of Benako, Tanzania, 1994, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 99
WORKERS
La Mattanza, traditional tuna fishing, Trapani, Sicily, Italy, 1991, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Sugar cane cutters, province of Havana, Cuba, 1988, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 104
Tea plantation, Rwanda, 1991, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 105
A vetiver distillery, RĂŠunion Island, French territory, 1989, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 106
A large proportion of the Dhanbad coal mine workers are women and the baskets they carry can weigh up to sixty-five pounds, Dhanbad, Bihar, India, 1989, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm
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A tuna fisherman asleep on a net, Trapani, Sicily, Italy, 1991 gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 108
Textile industry, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 1989, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 109
La Mattanza, traditional tuna fishing, Trapani, Sicily, Italy, 1991, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm
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Tea picking, Rwanda, 1991, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 112
Young tea-picker, Rwanda, 1991, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 113
Working on the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in a shipyard, Brest, France, 1990, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 114
Steel worker, Dunkirk, France, 1987, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/88.9 x 61 cm 115
Lead production process, Shymkent, Kazakhstan, 1991, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/ 50.8 x 61 cm 116
Bar near the Forever bicycle factory, Shanghai, China, 1989, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 117
Irrigation canal workers at Sardar Sarovar Dam, Gujarat, India, 1990, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 118
A ship breaking worker carrying a metal part, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 1989, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 119
A family leaves a coal mine with a cart used to bring food to workers, Dhanbad, Bihar, India, 1989, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm
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Women workers wear bracelets that formed part of their dowry, Rajasthan Canal Works, India, 1989, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 122
Workers on the canal construction site, Rajasthan Canal Works, India, 1989, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 123
Coal workers, Dhanbad, Bihar, India, 1989, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 124
Women carry pipes used for irrigation, Rajasthan Canal Works, India, 1989, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 125
Ship launch, Gdańsk Shipyards, Poland, 1990, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 126
Shipbreaking, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 1989, gelatin silver print, 50 x 36 inches/ 127 x 91.4 cm 127
Serra Pelada opencast gold mine, Parรก, Brazil, 1986, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 128
Serra Pelada opencast gold mine, Parรก, Brazil, 1986, gelatin silver print, 50 x 36 inches/127 x 91.4 cm 129
Serra Pelada opencast gold mine, Parรก, Brazil, 1986, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm
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Serra Pelada opencast gold mine, Parรก, Brazil, 1986, gelatin silver print, 36 x 50 inches/91.4 x 127 cm 132
Serra Pelada opencast gold mine, Parรก, Brazil, 1986, gelatin silver print, 35 x 24 inches/88.9 x 61 cm 133
Chemical sprays protect this firefighter against the heat of the flames, Oil wells, Greater Burhan, Kuwait, 1991, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 134
Oil wells, Greater Burhan, Kuwait, 1991, gelatin silver print, 68 x 50 inches/172.7 x 127 cm 135
Workers struggle to remove bolts from the remains of an old well head, Oil wells, Greater Burhan, Kuwait, 1991, gelatin silver print, 24 x 35 inches/61 x 88.9 cm 136
Firefighter knocked unconscious by a blast of gas from the well head, Oil wells, Greater Burhan, Kuwait, 1991, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm 137
Workers install the new well head, Oil wells, Greater Burhan, Kuwait, 1991, gelatin silver print, 50 x 68 inches/127 x 172.7 cm 138
An exhausted firefighter, Oil wells, Greater Burhan, Kuwait, 1991, gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches/61 x 50.8 cm 139
OTHER AMERICAS This limited portfolio of photographs comprises 20 gelatin silver prints made on Ilford FB Warmtone paper, in an edition of 16 plus 3 Artist Proofs. Selenium-toned prints by Dominique Granier. 2014.
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When I began this body of work in 1977, after some years of adventure in Europe and Africa, my only desire was to return to my beloved land, to Latin America, so dear and profound, to my Brazil, which a somewhat forced exile obliged me to leave. I would dream of this enchanted continent with all the fantasy inherited from a land of incredible tales. I would let my imagination drift through the immense mountains, green and fleshy, which form the walls of the Andean highlands; through the unfinished wars fought by legendary peasants and miners, almost revolutionary ghosts; through the indescribable mysticism of the Sertão, the Brazilian upland, with its leather-clad men and their ferocious fight for survival in the lands so arid, so poor, and so much the spiritual refuge of a whole country. I would dream of the Sierra Madre and its dense fog, its magical mushrooms and peyotes, its dead so alive in the imagination of the living, that place where it is so difficult to know if we are of this world or another, death is the inseparable sister of everyday life. Equipped with a whole arsenal of chimeras, I decided to dive into the most concrete of unrealities in this Latin America, so mysterious and suffering, so heroic and noble. The seven years spent making these images were like a trip seven centuries back in time to observe, unrolling before me, at a slow, utterly sluggish pace−which marks the passage of time in this region−all the flow of different cultures, so similar in their beliefs, losses, and sufferings. I haunted the universality of this world apart, traveling from the torrid coastal lowlands of northeastern Brazil to the mountains of Chile, to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico. Sebastião Salgado 1986
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Brazil, 1980, gelatin silver print, 21.5 x 16.5 inches/55 x 42 cm 144
Ecuador, 1982, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 145
Mexico, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 146
Mexico, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 147
Ecuador, 1978, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 148
Mexico, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 149
Mexico, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 150
Bolivia, 1983, gelatin silver print, 21.5 x 16.5 inches/55 x 42 cm 151
Brazil, 1981, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm
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Brazil, 1981, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 154
Ecuador, 1982, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 155
Brazil, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 156
Brazil, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 157
Ecuador, 1982, gelatin silver print, 6.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 158
Mexico, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 159
Guatemala, 1978, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 160
Brazil, 1983, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 161
Ecuador, 1982, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 162
Ecuador, 1982, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm 163
Mexico, 1980, gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 21.5 inches/42 x 55 cm
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© Nicole Toutoujni/UNICEF
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, working with several photo agencies including Magnum Photos until 1994, when he and Lélia Wanick Salgado formed Amazonas Images, created exclusively for his work. Salgado has traveled to more than 100 countries for his photographic projects. Beyond press publications, his work has been presented in books such as Other Americas (1986), Sahel: l’homme en détresse (1986), Sahel: el fin del camino (1988), Workers (1993), Terra (1997), Migrations and Portraits (2000), Africa (2007), Genesis (2013) and The Scent of a Dream (2015). Touring exhibitions of this work have been, and continue to be, presented throughout the world. In 2013 the book De ma terre à la Terre (From my land to the planet), a narrative account of Salgado’s life and career, was published, and in 2014, the documentary film The Salt of the Earth, directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, was released. In 2016, the book Kuwait: A Desert on Fire was published by Taschen. It comprises a series of photographs taken in 1991 documenting the torched Kuwaiti oil wells−the result of the Gulf War during which the United States-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and Saddam Hussein’s troops retaliated with an inferno. Sebastião Salgado has been awarded numerous major photographic prizes in recognition of his accomplishments. He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and among other distinctions, an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In April 2016, Salgado was elected member of the Académie des BeauxArts of the Institut de France, for the seat previously occupied by Lucien Clergue. In July 2016, he was named Chevalier (Knight) de la Légion d’Honneur, France. Together, Lélia and Sebastião have worked since the 1990s on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais. In 1998 they succeeded in turning this land into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra. The Instituto is dedicated to a mission of reforestation, conservation and environmental education.
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WWW.BACC.OR.TH • WWW.RPST.OR.TH • WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM Photographs © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas Images Text © 2017 Sundaram Tagore Gallery 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: Tietê bus terminal, São Paulo, Brazil, 1996, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches/50.8 x 61 cm