Sebastião Salgado: The Moses of black and white

India Today

2 days ago

Back in the era of analog photography, when Sebastio Salgado's images first became iconic, these were like commandments etched in silver halide for photographers. They welled inside us a luminous awe, and we felt our cameras to be instruments of a divine purpose: to record the epic human battle of survival and to tinge it with hope.The prophet of this faith is now no more with us—in body.advertisementWith the passing of Sebastio Salgado, 81, the world has lost one of its most profound visual storytellers. His monumental black-and-white images elevated documentary photography to the realm of high art. The unflinching empathy with the human condition—visible in the chiaroscuro of his images —transcended reportage and transformed them into meditations on the human spirit.Salgado's camera did not merely document the world, but moulded it anew in frames of compassion. He photographed human dignity and grace, gilding it with a beatific light, and rendered suffering in tones of sublime beauty, labour as a form of sacrament, and showed devastation imbued with promise of redemption.
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Born in Aimors, Brazil, Salgado educated himself in economics before discovering his true calling behind the camera. This profoundly shaped his approach to photography, infusing it with an understanding of the economic and political forces that shape human existence. His lens became a portal between the academic and the visceral, between an understanding of oppression and feeling its weight.There was, undeniably, a biblical cadence to his imagery—his moral vision saw humanity cast out of a utopian Eden, wandering through vast inhospitable deserts of deprivation, yet with traces of its divine spark still glowing amidst the devastation.In his iconic series 'Workers', labourers emerged from the shadows like figures of a Caravaggio painting, their dignity illuminated against an exploitative industrial darkness. His documentation of famine in the Sahel and conflicts across Africa had images of human suffering panning out as visions of fate and retribution.The biblical influence in Salgado's work extended beyond the merely aesthetic. His photographs of human exodus—whether of mud-slicked Brazilian gold miners descending into the earth like Dante's souls entering the Underworld or refugees crossing ravaged landscapes in search of promised lands—echoed the great migration narratives of scripture.The searing images of oil-field workers subduing the infernos of burning oil wells during the gulf war showed us human resilience against apocalyptic tableaus. Yet these were not myths from a distant era; they were urgent contemporary crises, demanding response and action from viewers.Salgado's powerful and sublime images, ironizing the harrowing conditions of suffering and survival with an aesthetic of grace and dignity struck at the core of our shared humanity. The photographs gained widespread acclaim, gracing magazine spreads and gallery walls. Yet this very success sparked the most intense criticism of his career.advertisementSalgado's photography, in its dramatic use of light and subtle tonal gradations, is so painterly that many people have accused him of aestheticising agony and using the pain of human suffering as a paintbrush to create visual poetry. In the photographic community, this discourse is often referred to as 'the Salgado Paradox'. It voices concerns about empathy morphing into a 'beautification' of the image—one that transforms starving bodies into sculptural forms and human grief into visual grandeur.
Critics such Susan Sontag argued that such beautiful depictions of misery could provide visual solace and aesthetic comfort rather than necessary discomfort to the conscience. They felt Salgado's painterly images could inadvertently numb viewers rather than impel them to respond to the injustice.advertisementSalgado battled these reactions, acknowledging the ethical concerns his work raised, at the same time defending his belief that beauty could serve as a conduit to empathy rather an escape from responsibility. His most eloquent response came not in words but in action—Instituto Terra, the environmental restoration project he founded with his wife Llia Wanick Salgado.Together, they resurrected 1,754 acres of devastated Brazilian Atlantic Forest, nurturing over two million saplings into a restored ecosystem. This remarkable reforestation effort stands as perhaps Salgado's greatest masterpiece—not captured in film, but in soil cultivated leaf by leaf, with an intent to offer healing to the fractured world that he photographed.This ecological awakening birthed Salgado's final magnum opus: 'Genesis'. Across eight years and 32 expeditions to Earth's farthest of and most-pristine corners, he redirected his vision from humanity's wounds to the planet's remaining sanctuaries.Salgado documented untouched landscapes bathed in glorious light and indigenous communities tenuously clinging to a harmony with nature, revealing Edens still existing on Earth—fragile yet magnificent, demanding protection rather than exploitation. He called it 'a visual ode to the majesty and fragility of Earth also a warning, I hope, of all that we risk losing'.advertisement
As we bid farewell to Salgado, we celebrate a life dedicated to bearing witness to the struggles of humanity, through images of profound and lasting beauty—photographs that have the contemplative power of prayer and the silence of sacred spaces. He showed us how the camera could depict suffering without making us wince, creating visuals that lodge into memory like scripture, providing both comfort and purpose.At a time when attention spans splinter into seconds and the digital deceptions of AI-generated imagery threaten the very foundation of photographic truth, we find ourselves navigating a crisis of visual faith. It is precisely now that we need the anchoring power of authentic photography—images that arrest, challenge and haunt us, as antidotes to the artificial allure of manufactured spectacle.advertisementThe resurrection of Salgado's images, shared across digital platforms after his departure, once again reminds us of photography's fundamental promise: to reveal truth, to inspire compassion and to preserve the irreplaceable testimony of the human experience. It tells us all over again that the photograph made with a kindred eye is still the finest medium to transmit the magic and wonder of life.This is Salgado's final and enduring sermon.Subscribe to India Today Magazine