Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has created numerous in-depth bodies of work documenting life on Earth, from crushing images of unimaginable hardship faced by gold miners in Brazil and pictures of hell on earth from blazing oil wells in Kuwait to scenes of serene, magnificent wilderness Salgado has touched the depths of the human condition. Through his expansive, yet finely detailed black-and-white photographs, Salgado reveals both awe-inspiring and horrifying scenes from some of the most far-flung corners of the world, presenting us with his own unique vision of our vast planet.
Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944 in the Brazilian mining state of Minas Gerais and he now lives in Paris. Initially an economist with the World Bank, Salgado began his photographic career in Paris in 1973. He worked with the Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos agencies until 1994, when he and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado founded Amazonas Images, dedicated exclusively to his work. He has traveled to more than 100 countries for his photographic projects, resulting in many books including Other Americas (1986); Sahel, lʼhomme en détresse (1986); Sahel: the end of the road (1988); An Uncertain Grace (1990); Workers (1993); Terra (1997); Migrations and Portraits (2000); Africa (2007), Genesis (2013) and Amazonia (2021)
Exhibitions of Salgado’s work have been presented in institutions throughout the world, including International Center of Photography, New York; Caixa Forum, Spain; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Natural History Museum, London; Somerset House, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Barbican Gallery, London; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin; and George Eastman House, Rochester. His work is held in many museum collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, among others.
