Sebastião Salgado, photographer of human misery and dignity, dies at 81

A scene from the 2014 French/Brazilian documentary film "The Salt of the Earth," directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders.
Courtesy of (c) Sebastiao Salgado
In his landmark 1986 photo essay of gold mine workers in the Pará state in northern Brazil, one image showed a man encased in sweat and dirt cresting a wooden ladder. A loaded bag from the mine floor was held by a rope around his forehead. Another scene, shot from within the mine, was a wide-angle tableau of workers climbing and digging in an ant-like flow.
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Goldmine, Serra Pelada, State of Pará, Brazil, 1986 © Sebastião Salgado
© Sebastião Salgado, courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery
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For decades, Mr. Salgado was on hand for many of the world's major crises - the devastating famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s, the 1991 US-led war to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and other upheavals. He described his mission as seeking to convey a sense of the ordinary people caught, often helpless, in the tumult.
The assignment in Kuwait was for The New York Times Magazine and centered on the efforts of workers struggling to extinguish oil-well fires set by Saddam Hussein's troops, an environmental disaster that came to define Iraq's turbulent retreat from Kuwait.
'The photos were beyond extraordinary,' said Kathy Ryan, a former photo director at magazine, who worked with Mr. Salgado on that assignment. 'It was one of the best photo essays ever made.'
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On another noteworthy assignment, Mr. Salgado documented dramatic scenes following a failed assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981. He photographed the gunman, John Hinckley Jr., moments after he was tackled to the ground.
'Everyone knows he had an incredible way of making pictures,' Ryan said. But, she added, he also had an uncanny sense of 'where important stories were.'
His other projects - part of a body of work spanning 120 countries - included a series on migrants in North Africa desperate to reach Europe and the life in slums where the immediate concerns are food and safety.
'I admit there's a very specific message in my work,' Mr. Salgado said in a 1990 interview with journalist Amanda Hopkinson in London. 'The developing countries have never been as poor or as dependent as they are today.'
'It is time to launch the concept of the universality of humanity,' he continued. 'Photography lends itself to a demonstration of this and as an instrument of solidarity between peoples.'
A scene from "The Salt of the Earth," directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders.
Photo courtesy of (c) Sebastiao Salgado
An economist by training, he borrowed his wife's camera in 1971 while working in London for the International Coffee Organization. During a trip to Africa, he took photos of workers and rural life. 'Four days later I had an obsession; a fortnight later, a camera of my own,' Mr. Salgado recounted. 'Within a month I had a darkroom.'
He sought jobs as a freelance photographer in 1973 and later contributed work to the Sygma and Gamma photo agencies. In the late 1970s, he joined Magnum, a professional home for some of the world's top photographers.
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Mr. Salgado stepped away from Magnum in 1994 to establish Amazonia Images with his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado. Four years later, the couple founded the environmental group Instituto Terra, which seeks to restore stretches of Brazil's southeastern Atlantic Forest threatened by development.
Mr. Salgado increasingly turned his lens on nature - drawing close enough to photograph the armor-like skin on a marine iguana in the Galapagos and, other times, pulled back for vistas such as a river through the Alaskan wilderness and the sculpted curves of Antarctic icebergs.
An iceberg between Paulet and South Shetland islands off Antarctica, shown in a scene from "The Salt of the Earth."
Courtesy of (c) Sebastiao Salgado
In his 'Amazonia' series, Mr. Salgado traveled across the rainforest, taking portraits of Indigenous people and chronicling the power of the natural world such as towering clouds, appearing in his photos the color of forged steel, rising above the forest canopy.
In a private nature reserve, he and his wife planted more than 300 species of trees as part of a rewilding. As the trees grew, birds and insects returned. The tree roots held back erosion.
'Although we were amazed at how nature can fight back, we began to get worried about the threat to the whole planet,' Mr. Salgado told the British Journal of Photography in 2013.
'There is a strange idea that nature and humanity are different but in fact this separation poses a great threat to humanity,' he added. 'We think we can control nature, but it's easy to forget that we need it for our survival.'
Manda Yawanawá, from the village of Escondido. Rio Gregório Indigenous Territory, State of Acre, Brazil, 2016 © Sebastião Salgado
© Sebastião Salgado, courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery
Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Jr. was born in Aimorés, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais north of Rio de Janeiro, on Feb. 8, 1944. His family operated a cattle ranch.
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In 1964, the Brazilian military seized control of the government in a coup that ousted President João Goulart. As the ruling junta waged crackdowns on dissent, Mr. Salgado and his wife decided to flee. They headed in 1969 to Paris, which would become their main base over the next five decades.
'If a photographer is not there, there's no image. We need to be there,' he told Forbes Brasil. 'We expose ourselves a lot. And that is why it is such an immense privilege.'
Among his honors was the Leica Oskar Barnack Awards, which he received twice, and more than 10 World Press Photo awards in categories including news feature and general news.
In addition to his wife, he leaves his sons, Juliano and Rodrigo, and two grandchildren. A 2014 documentary on Mr. Salgado's life and work, 'The Salt of the Earth,' was co-directed by Wim Wenders and his son Juliano.
Mr. Salgado, an honorary degree recipient, took a picture during a Harvard Commencement ceremony in Cambridge in 2022.
Mary Schwalm/Associated Press
In a memorial ceremony in Brazil's capital, Brasília, the country's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, led a minute of silence and called Mr. Salgado's photographs 'a wake-up call for the conscience of all humanity.'
During an interview with the Guardian last year, Mr. Salgado asked: 'Why should the poor world be uglier than the rich world? The light here is the same as there. The dignity here is the same as there.'
Mount Roraima, State of Roraima, Brazil, 2018 © Sebastião Salgado
© Sebastião Salgado, courtesy of Robert Klein Gallery
Material from The New York Times was used in this obituary.

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