A new documentary sheds light on the most influential documentary photographer of our time, writes Robert Keeley.
Every photograph is taken in an instant, but it’s arguable that what distinguishes the simple snapshots taken every day from images of more significance is the amount of time and effort taken beforehand to develop an idea which will endure. And when it comes to long-lasting ideas, there would be nobody of more importance in the craft today than the inestimable Brazilian social documentary shooter Sebastiao Salgado. This quietly spoken master craftsman, who began his working life as an economist back in the sixties, is now one of the most revered shooters of modern times. But I wonder how many know his life story, and how he came to make photography his obsession?
If you don’t know the details, you should do yourself a favour and see the documentary screened in selected cinemas over the last few months, "The Salt of the Earth" and now available on DVD and some online streaming services including iTunes. This powerful film, made by the well-known director Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son Juliano, outlines the life story of the now elderly Salgado, and how he came to be infatuated with the craft of making pictures, and then withdrew from it in disillusionment. This film explains how the strain of constantly recording the horrors and deprivations of the world’s poor, downtrodden, refugees and working classes finally wore down his soul, and ultimately forced him to take a sabbatical from his life’s work. In short, for a period of time Salgado simply gave away his mission of producing social documentary photography because he felt the world was without hope, and had literally become a hell on earth. That’s certainly understandable, because the master photographer had spent his working life on a series of multi-year projects which included drought and famine in Africa (sometimes government-induced), the grind of daily factory work around the world, civil wars, and finally – and most brutally – the mass execution of Africans by their fellows in the genocide of Rwanda in 1994.
Salgado says frankly in this film that those last horrors, and the subsequent traumas he saw as Hutus and Tutsis trekked around central Africa to avoid further slaughters (sometimes unsuccessfully) brought him to despair about the human condition. It was only when he returned to his family farm in Brazil, itself devastated by a changing climate and human degradation, that he finally found the will to fight on.
Encouraged by his wife to begin a huge program of replanting, Salgado once again found beauty in the natural world and in the process transformed his formerly ravaged farmland. Then, despite the urging of friends who feared it was beyond him, he lifted his camera once again to begin shooting some stunning landscapes and wildlife images in the most isolated and wild regions of the world.
In the end, he says his most recent project lifted his gloom, and taught him that much of the natural world still remains untouched by human deprivations. And it showed him there was a reason to begin taking his powerful black and white images once again.
Sebastiao Salgado is one of the most influential documentary shooters of the last four decades, but his recent work recording
the natural world has restored his belief in his craft, after he had decided to give it away in despair.