Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian social documentary

Social documentary photography

Social documentary photography may be defined as the act of recording, with a camera, human beings in their natural condition. Often is also refers to a socially critical genre of photography dedicated to showing the life of underprivileged or disadvantaged people.-Origin of social documentary...

 photographer

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 and photojournalist

Photojournalism

Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism...

.

Biography

Salgado was born on February 8, 1944 in Aimorés

Aimorés

Aimorés is a city in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. In 2004 its population was estimated to be 24,420.The town was founded on 18 September 1925....

, in the state of Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais

Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...

, Brazil. After a somewhat itinerant childhood, Salgado initially trained as an economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

, earning a master’s degree in economics from the University of São Paulo

University of São Paulo

Universidade de São Paulo is a public university in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is the largest Brazilian university and one of the country's most prestigious...

 in Brazil. He began work as an economist for the International Coffee Organization, often traveling to Africa on missions for the World Bank

World Bank

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...

, when he first started seriously taking photographs. He chose to abandon a career as an economist and switched to photography in 1973, working initially on news assignments before veering more towards documentary-type work. Salgado initially worked with the photo agency Sygma and the Paris-based Gamma

Gamma (agency)

Gamma is a French photo agency, founded in 1966 by Raymond Depardon, Hubert Henrotte, Hugues Vassal and Léonard de Raemy. Gilles Caron joined the agency shortly after its foundation...

, but in 1979 he joined the international cooperative of photographers, Magnum Photos

Magnum Photos

Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices located in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo...

. He left Magnum in 1994 and with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado formed his own agency, Amazonas Images, in Paris to represent his work. He is particularly noted for his social documentary photography of workers in less developed nations. They reside in Paris.

He has traveled in over 100 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these, besides appearing in numerous press publications, have also 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), and Africa (2007). Touring exhibitions of this work have been, and continue to be, presented throughout the world. Longtime gallery director Hal Gould

Hal Gould

Hal Gould is an American photographer and gallery curator.-Early life:Gould was born in in Clark, Wyoming. He grew up on a farm in New Mexico and left home at the age of 15. After holding a number of different jobs, he entered dentistry school, but was drafted into the army in 1940...

 considers Salgado to be the most important photographer of the early 21st century, and gave him his first show in the United States.

Salgado has been awarded numerous major photographic prizes in recognition of his accomplishments. He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences

Academy of Arts and Sciences

Academy of Arts and Sciences could refer to* American Academy of Arts and Sciences* Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences* American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences* Puerto Rico Academy of Arts and Sciences...

 in the United States.

Together, Lélia and Sebastião have worked since the 1990s on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. 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.

In 2004, Sebastião Salgado began a project named "Genesis," aiming at the presentation of the unblemished faces of nature and humanity. It consists of a series of photographs of landscapes and wildlife, as well as of human communities that continue to live in accordance with their ancestral traditions and cultures. This body of work is conceived as a potential path to humanity’s rediscovery of itself in nature.

Salgado works on long term, self-assigned projects many of which have been published as books: The Other Americas, Sahel, Workers, and Migrations. The later two are mammoth collections with hundreds of images each from all around the world. His most famous pictures are of a gold mine in Brazil called Serra Pelada

Serra Pelada

Serra Pelada was a large gold mine in Brazil south of the mouth of the Amazon River. The mine was made famous by the images taken by Sebastião Salgado showing an anthill of workers moving vast amounts of ore by hand...

. He is presently working on a project called Genesis, photographing the landscape, flora and fauna of places on earth that have not been taken over by man.

In September and October 2007, Salgado displayed his photographs of coffee

Coffee

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...

workers from India, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Brazil at the Brazilian Embassy in London. The aim of the project was to raise public awareness of the origins of the popular drink.

Publications

Note: Dates refer to English-language editions.

• An Uncertain Grace (1992)
• Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age (1993), includes photos from 26 countries
• Terra (1997)
• Migrations (2000), includes photos from 39 countries
• The Children: Refugees and Migrants (2000)
• Sahel: The End of the Road (2004)
• Afrika (2007)

External links

• Amazonas Images Photo agency formed by Salgado and his wife Lélia Wanick.
• Biography at The Guardian
• "Back to Nature, in Pictures and Action," New York Times, May 31, 2009