Legends Never Die – In Praise of Sebastiao Salgado, Who Brought Humanity to his Photographs

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03-06-2025

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Legends Never Die – In Praise of Sebastiao Salgado, Who Brought Humanity to his Photographs
Pablo Bartholomew
6 minutes ago
A personal tribute by an Indian photographer and admirer who saw him work closely in Rajasthan.
Photographer Sebastiao Salgado on a shoot at the Indira Gandhi canal project work site in western Rajasthan. His son Juliano is behind him. Photo: Pablo Bartholomew.
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In 1967, Cornell Capa, the American photojournalist and brother of the legendary Robert Capa (one of the founders of Magnum Photos), organised an exhibition titled 'The Concerned Photographer'. The exhibition showcased the work of six impactful photojournalists, demonstrating how their socially engaged photography educates and inspires social change rather than simply chronicling events.
In 1969, Sebastiao Salgado was still studying Economics in Brazil as the military dictatorship reigned in his country. Because of his activism, he became a political refugee in France. There, in Paris, he finished his PhD in Economic and began working with the International Coffee Organization as a consultant. He frequently travelled to Africa to examine coffee plantations. Those were transformative years for him as he witnessed economic and social inequalities.
Finding his awakening in photography, he transformed himself into a photojournalist around 1973-74, at the time Cornell Capa created the International Center of Photography (ICP) to foster and support the 'Concerned Photographer' concept through gallery, museum, and educational programs. There is no definitive way to determine whether the Concerned Photographer exhibition or the establishment of ICP had an impact on Salgado but this era marked the peak and golden age of photojournalism and magazine photography.
Salgado, who started as a photojournalist, worked the grind, doing stories and assignments in colour, and moved between agencies such as Sygma and Gamma before joining Magnum Photos, which gave him more space to abandon colour, allowing him to shoot only in black and white.
This decision, made in an era when everything was in colour, was a testament to his exceptional conviction and courage. It must have been tough to turn down assignments that were offered and take a career risk. Still, Salgado's boldness in going against the grain, even if it narrowed his publishing chances, was driven by his conviction to be able to see and communicate a visual language the way he wanted to.
Salgado used books and exhibitions as an outlet for self-expression; at least in those days, it was still fashionable and lucrative to create coffee table-size books with large print runs. However, he and Leila, his wife, controlled the layout and narrative, with publishers offering high advances and royalties. Within the Gallery world, he could command a high price for his prints, mostly limited editions but also some open editions – this was an unconventional path. Typically, the gallery system employs a limited-edition approach, offering a finite, predetermined set of prints for each photograph to create value and exclusivity. These addressed the argument that photography, unlike painting or sculpture, can be mass-reproduced, thus losing uniqueness. Salgado signed but did not number his prints, and even for his open edition photographs, the starting prices range from USD 10,000 for the smallest print size, though he offered multiple sizes.
In 1985, both Salgado and I were awarded multiple prizes by the World Press Photo contest, which, in the last century, had significant relevance in selecting some of the finest imagery created by documentary photographers and photojournalists. Salgado, who was a member of Magnum Photos, was awarded first prize in the 12-image story category for General News, News Features, and the Oskar Barnack Award for his coverage of the famine in Ethiopia. I won the World Press Photo of the Year and the first prize for spot news for my image from Bhopal, which was taken at that time with the Gamma-Liaison Network. So, this is the first time I was exposed to his work.
By the late 1980s, Salgado was already well-known for his long-form photo stories, and Time Magazine assigned me to shoot him in the winter of 1989 while he was photographing the Jaisalmer area of Rajasthan for his Workers Project. Here, I chanced to meet the elder son, a young Juliano, who accompanied Salgado on the site of the Indira Gandhi Canal in Rajasthan.
It was interesting watching him work. I wrapped up my shooting with him on location quite quickly so as not to be in his way. I understood that his time was his own, and I was an intrusion. I'm not sure if photographers like to be photographed by others; at least I don't. We would have conversations during his breaks, and towards the end of the day, I parted to head back to Delhi; it was a five-hour drive, an overnight hotel stay to catch a morning Indian Airline hopping flight to Delhi and at Delhi airport itself ship my film after customs clearance, off to New York on a Pan Am flight.
More recently, I heard a story from a colleague about his cousin, who was the head of the construction company responsible for the Rajasthan end of the canal works. The colleague also added that his cousin, as a thank you, received a large print from Salgado as a gesture of appreciation for his help.
Salgado had approached him for access to the site, and the one standout condition was that he did not want any official accompanying him but wanted to work alone. And that is how I found him on location, with three Leica SLR cameras around his neck and one shoulder bag, which was unlike a camera bag. On one of the cameras, he had a small portable tripod screwed on that acted as a shoulder brace.
After the World Press Awards, I spent a lot of time in France. In one of the years at the Visa pour l'Image, the photojournalism festival in the South of France, as I was exiting the courtyard of the Pams Hotel, a 19th-century historic building and one of the main festival venues, Salgado was standing by the courtyard door in conversation with someone. Our eyes met, and he hailed me. We exchanged some words, and involuntarily, and he wrote down his phone number and address in Paris, telling me to get in touch with him. I thanked him and walked down the curved stairwell with the group I was with, but I never made it to Paris on that trip and subsequently lost that piece of paper.
In the following years, I encountered him at exhibitions, book launches, and other photography gatherings in Paris. On one of these occasions, he introduced me to his wife, Leila and mentioned that she was the powerhouse behind him. Most meetings were unplanned, if not accidental, and through them, I think you can develop a different friendship and relationship without having to live out of each other's pockets.
By 1994, Leila and he had founded Amazonas Images, the agency that allowed him to complete creative independence over his work and the way the images were distributed. The Worker's Project was implemented under this new system, allowing him to examine the challenges of manual labour worldwide across various industries, including mining, agriculture, and oil, while travelling to 26 countries. To list a few of these –
Brazil: Gold Miners in Serra Pelada,
Kuwait: Oil Workers battling fires after the Gulf War,
Rwanda: Tea plantation workers,
Indonesia: Sulphur miners in Ljen, and
India: Canal workers in Rajasthan.
This culminated in an exhibition and book in 1993. It is my favourite among his works and probably garnered him the most attention, cementing his legacy as a master photographer with major media outlets, from The New York Times to The Sunday Times Magazine, running large spreads.
Having travelled to over 120 countries, exploring and seeking his concerns, and trained as an economist with left-leaning views helped his quest throughout the world and especially within his own country, leading him to produce vast bodies of photographs that are unparalleled in their scale. Often, projects would take years to complete.
Salgado's dedication to his work serves as a model for younger photographers. To name a few of his projects that are important to me, 'Migrations' – a seven-year project documenting mass displacement across 35 countries, 'Genesis' – a global exhibition and a book showcasing Salgado's eight-year journey documenting pristine nature in which he describes it as a 'love letter to the planet,' emphasising the need for conservation and respect for nature; and 'Amazônia' – a tribute to the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous communities.
In 2009, I received an invitation from the Brazilian Ambassador in New Delhi to visit his residence on Aurangzeb Road to meet Salgado there. I remember an eager Salgado, getting excited over a drink wanting to buy a Royal Enfield in New Delhi and ship it back to Paris and about the idea of driving it around Paris with Leila, roaring through the streets. At 65, a very different Salgado, a teenager, emerged that day.
What impressed me was Leila, his lifelong collaborator who designed his books, curated his exhibitions, co-founded and ran his photo agency Amazonas Images, oversaw his fine art print production jointly. She has been a partner not just in his photography but also the co-founder of environmental projects at Instituto Terra and leading a reforestation project of over 1700 acres of land by planting millions of trees.
His elder son, Juliano, years later flourished into a documentary filmmaker, collaborating with Wim Wenders on the film The Salt of the Earth (2014) about his father and his work. Leila produced the film, which won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for an Academy Award, amongst other accolades. So, the family was a solid force to keep him going in his active days, and later, when he slowed down due to his illness, he focused on more environmental advocacy rather than being in the field.
But not all was always well on his work front. His last exhibition, Amazônia, closed at the Royal Dockyard Museum on April 20, 2025 and drew criticism for exoticising and romanticising the indigenous communities of his country. He was also criticised for showing too much nakedness, which for decades the National Geographic Magazine was also accused of, of showing ethnographic and anthropological work as 'tribal porn' to middle America. This is an ongoing debate about whether an outsider can accurately depict a community's people, and these conversations will continue. But whatever the criticism, one thing is clear: it is the photography of a highly sensitive mind; these images will remain as a testament to time.
Salgado was tragically taken away from the world of photography much before his time on May 23, 2025. The news made headlines around the world.
He was a victim of the occupational hazard of being a photographer, who can often face illness and death in the field. In his case, it was complications from leukemia, which was linked to a rare, fatal type of malaria, which he had contracted in Indonesia in 2010 while working on his Genesis project. As the condition progressed, he could have perhaps totally overcome it had he followed his doctor's advice and rested for the months that he was asked to. But restless to move, he broke his recuperation period.
Sebastiao Salgado remains every inch the concerned and humanist photographer whose work and contribution to photography will remain etched forever.
Pablo Bartholomew is a renowned artist and photographer with a practice of nearly five decades. He has held over 30 solo exhibitions since 1979, including at galleries, museums, and biennales. His work has been featured in major international publications and won awards, including the World Press Photo Award for Picture of the Year 1985, which was captured during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. He received the Padma Shri in 2013 and Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014.
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