Latest news with #MagnumPhotos
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
‘Am I on television?': Steve McCurry's cameo in girls' dance video wins hearts on the Internet
It's not every day that you end up dancing on the streets of Venice with a legendary photographer, without even realising it. But that's what happened in a now-viral Instagram reel that's left the Internet grinning. The video opens with two girls filming a dance to a trending audio clip against the dreamy backdrop of Venice. Midway through, iconic photojournalist Steve McCurry – behind the famed Afghan Girl portrait – wanders into the frame. Startled, the girls pause their routine. McCurry, curious and smiling, asks, 'Am I on television?' One of them laughs and explains it's just a Reel for Instagram. Then, McCurry steps up to the camera, says, 'Hi, welcome to Venice,' and sends a few flying kisses. When the girls invite him to dance, he gladly joins – swaying and laughing, completely unbothered by the attention. The girls, meanwhile, had no idea who he was until the Reel went viral. The Reel, shared by Instagram user @mukhlisaa_italy, is captioned, '@stevemccurryofficial truly honoured to meet you in person. Didn't realize I was in the presence of such talent. It was an unexpected and unforgettable moment.' Since being posted, the video has garnered over 726,000 likes and 61,300 comments, with viewers across the world flooding the post with love. A post shared by Мухлиса Абдуллаева (@mukhlisaa_italy) Reacting to the video, one user said, 'This is the most beautiful reel I've seen so far.' Another wrote, 'You guys are lucky to have met him! He is a well-known photographer and photojournalist. His work has inspired many people all over the world.' A third user wrote, 'He is so good and you are too cute,' while a fourth commented, 'This is so wholesome.' McCurry, born on April 23, 1950, is best recognised for his iconic photograph 'Afghan Girl,' featuring a young girl with striking green eyes. The portrait graced the cover of the National Geographic magazine multiple times. Over the years, McCurry has completed numerous assignments for the magazine, and has been a member of the prestigious Magnum Photos agency since 1986. McCurry has earned several prestigious honours, including the National Press Photographers Association's Magazine Photographer of the Year, the Centenary Medal from the Royal Photographic Society, and two first-place awards in the World Press Photo contest in 1985 and 1992.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A lens on poverty and the environment: Sebastiao Salgado is dead at age 81
Known for sweeping black-and-white photography that captured the natural world and marginalised communities, Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado has passed away at age 81. His death was confirmed on Friday by the nonprofit he and his wife Lelia Deluiz Wanick Salgado founded, the Instituto Terra. 'It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of Sebastiao Salgado, our founder, mentor and eternal source of inspiration,' the institute wrote in a statement. 'Sebastiao was much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time. Alongside his life partner, Lelia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, he sowed hope where there was devastation and brought to life the belief that environmental restoration is also a profound act of love for humanity. 'His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, the power of transformative action.' Salgado's upbringing would prove to be the inspiration for some of his work. Born in 1944 in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, he saw one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems, the Atlantic Forest, recede from the land he grew up on, as the result of development. He and his wife spent part of the last decades of their life working to restore the forest and protect it from further threats. But Salgado was best known for his epic photography, which captured the exploitation of both the environment and people. His pictures were marked by their depth and texture, each black-and-white frame a multilayered world of tension and struggle. In one recent photography collection, entitled Exodus, he portrayed populations across the world taking on migrations big and small. One shot showed a crowded boat packed with migrants and asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Another showed refugees in Zaire balancing buckets and jugs above their heads, as they trekked to retrieve water for their camp. Salgado himself was no stranger to fleeing hardship. A trained economist, he and his wife left Brazil in 1969, near the start of a nearly two-decade-long military dictatorship. By 1973, he had begun to dedicate himself to photography full time. After working several years with France-based photography agencies, he joined the cooperative Magnum Photos, where he would become one of its most celebrated artists. His work would draw him back to Brazil in the late 1980s, where he would embark on one of his most famous projects: photographing the backbreaking conditions at the Serra Pelada gold mine, near the mouth of the Amazon River. Through his lens, global audiences saw thousands of men climbing rickety wooden ladders out of the crater they were carving. Sweat made their clothes cling to their skin. Heavy bundles were slung over their backs. And the mountainside around them was jagged with the ridges they had chipped away at. 'He had shot the story in his own time, spending his own money,' his agent Neil Burgess wrote in the British Journal of Photography. Burgess explained that Salgado 'spent around four weeks living and working alongside the mass of humanity that had flooded in, hoping to strike it rich' at the gold mine. 'Salgado had used a complex palette of techniques and approaches: landscape, portraiture, still life, decisive moments and general views,' Burgess said in his essay. 'He had captured images in the midst of violence and danger, and others at sensitive moments of quiet and reflection. It was a romantic, narrative work that engaged with its immediacy, but had not a drop of sentimentality. It was astonishing, an epic poem in photographic form.' When photos from the series were published in The Sunday Times Magazine, Burgess said the reaction was so great that his phone would not stop ringing. Critics, however, accused Salgado during his career of glamourising poverty, with some calling his style an 'aesthetic of misery'. But Salgado pushed back on that assessment in a 2024 interview with The Guardian. '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.' In 2014, one of his sons, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, partnered with the German filmmaker Wim Wenders to film a documentary about Salgado's life, called The Salt of the Earth. One of his last major photography collections was Amazonia, which captured the Amazon rainforest and its people. While some viewers criticised his depiction of Indigenous peoples in the series, Salgado defended his work as a vision of the region's vitality. 'To show this pristine place, I photograph Amazonia alive, not the dead Amazonia,' he told The Guardian in 2021, after the collection's release. As news of Salgado's death spread on Friday, artists and public figures offered their remembrances of the photographer and his work. Among the mourners was Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president, who offered a tribute on social media. 'His discontent with the fact that the world is so unequal and his obstinate talent in portraying the reality of the oppressed always served as a wake-up call for the conscience of all humanity,' Lula wrote. 'Salgado did not only use his eyes and his camera to portray people: He also used the fullness of his soul and his heart. For this very reason, his work will continue to be a cry for solidarity. And a reminder that we are all equal in our diversity.'
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sebastião Salgado captured the world like no other photographer
It's a testament to the epic career of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who died this week at age 81, that this year has already seen exhibitions of hundreds of his photos in Mexico City, France and southern California. Salgado, who in his lifetime produced more than 500,000 images while meticulously documenting every continent on earth and many of the major geopolitical events since the second world war, will be remembered as one of the world's most prodigious and relentlessly empathetic chroniclers of the human condition. An economist by training, Salgado only began photographing at age 29 after picking up the camera of his wife, Lélia. He began working as a photojournalist in the 1970s, quickly building an impressive reputation that led him to the prestigious Magnum Photos in 1979. He spent three decades photographing people in modern societies all over the world before stepping back in 2004 to initiate the seven-year Genesis project – there, he dedicated himself to untouched landscapes and pre-modern human communities, a project that would guide the remainder of his career. His late project Amazônia saw him spend nine years preparing a profound look into the terrain and people of the Amazon rain forest. In 2014 the German director Wim Wenders teamed up with the photographer's son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado to co-produce a documentary celebrating Salgado's work titled The Salt of the Earth. While covering 40 years of Salgado's creative output, the film also centers around his decision to temporarily abandon photography after witnessing firsthand the horrors of the Rwandan genocide. Amid that crisis he founded his Instituto Terra in 1998 – ultimately planting hundreds of thousands of trees in an effort to help reforest Brazil's Rio Doce valley – and through his communion with the land slowly pieced his way back to photography. Salgado tirelessly, and probably also recklessly, threw himself into his work – while documenting Mozambique's civil war in 1974 he ran afoul of a landmine, and later, in Indonesia in the 1990s, he caught malaria, leading to ongoing medical issues for the remainder of his life. He spent nearly two months walking Arctic Russia with the Indigenous Nenets, encountering temperatures as cold as -45C, and he also recounted walking nearly 1,000km through Ethiopia because of the lack of roads. Late in life, Salgado was forced to have a surgical implant in order to retain use of his knee in the course of making his Amazônia project. His biblical landscapes are often taken from thousands of feet in the air – one imagines him leaning out of a helicopter, angling for the perfect framing. He was known for utilizing virtually every mode of conveyance available in pursuit of the new and unseen – car, truck, ship, helicopter, plane, even canoe, hot-air balloon, Amazon riverboat and others. Prints of Salgado's work – always black and white, and generally printed at a dazzlingly high contrast – were as sizable as his ambitious, landing as overwhelming presences in galleries and museums. He was known for blacks that were as inky as they come, and his landscapes also show a remarkable obsession with rays of light shining through rainclouds, around mountains and off of water. He loved the graininess that came from film – so much so, that when he finally traded in his trusty Leica for a digital camera, he often digitally manipulated his images to bring in a grain reminiscent of real film. For as much as Salgado was a photographer of extremes, he could also do tonal nuance – many of his landscapes are only capable of capturing their terrain's immensity due to his careful use of mid-tones, and Salgado's human portraiture often abandoned the high contrast for a rich subtlety. No matter how enormous his subjects were, he always retained a remarkable human touch. When photographing Brazil's Serra Pelada gold mine he made images showing the workers as thousands of ants scrambling up perilously sheer walls of dirt, yet also captured indelible expressions of effort and pride on the faces of individual, mud-soaked laborers. His image of the Churchgate train station in Bombay, India, shows thousands of commuters in motion, looking like a literal flood of humanity surging around two waiting trains. One snap of a firefighter in Kuwait working to cap the oil wells that Saddam Hussein set ablaze shows a man hunched over in a posture of utter exhaustion, one of countless examples of Salgado's incredible ability to limn the human form via film. Given everything that Salgado shot over his incredible six decades of work, it's hard to imagine what else he could have done. Upon turning 80 last year, he had declared his decision to step back from photography in order to manage his enormous archive of images and administer worldwide exhibitions of his work. He also showed his dim outlook for humanity, telling the Guardian: 'I am pessimistic about humankind, but optimistic about the planet. The planet will recover. It is becoming increasingly easier for the planet to eliminate us.' It will probably take decades to fully appreciate and exhibit Salgado's remaining photographs, to say nothing of grappling with the images he showed during his lifetime. One hopes that amid a period of increasing global strife, environmental collapse and threats to the mere notion of truth, this remarkable output will remain a beacon of decency and humanity – and help us chart a path back from the brink.
Reuters
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Reuters
OBITUARY Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado dead at 81
SAO PAULO, May 23 (Reuters) - Sebastiao Salgado, the Brazilian photographer whose black-and-white images of workers, migrants, and humanity's conflicted relationship with nature captivated the world, has died at the age of 81, the nonprofit he founded said on Friday. Salgado was born in Aimores, a city in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil in 1944. An economist by training, he became a photographer in the 1970s while living in Paris, after fleeing the military regime that then ruled Brazil with his wife, Lelia Wanick Salgado. He traveled the world with his camera and quickly rose through the ranks of photo agencies, eventually becoming one of Magnum's star photographers. A 1987 photo essay of thousands of half-naked men digging through the immense mine of Serra Pelada, in northern Brazil, formed part of his landmark Workers series, in which he also documented oil workers in Kuwait and coal miners in India. 'It was madly ambitious, and I struggled to think how to even begin pitching the idea to editors in London,' his agent Neil Burgess wrote in a 2019 essay in the British Journal of Photography. And, yet, after seeing his work portraying gold miners, several of the world's top magazines wanted to fund it, he added. Salgado went on to publish a number of ambitious and epic projects. In Exodus, from the 2000s, he spent years photographing the grueling journeys of migrants around the world. In Genesis, in the 2010s, he captured monumental scenes of nature, animals, and Indigenous people. And in Amazonia, his most recent project, he spent years traveling through the world's largest rainforest to capture some of the planet's most remote treasures and the communities that protect them. His critics accused him of exploiting an 'aesthetic of misery' as he photographed some of the world's poorest in their most vulnerable moments. 'They say I was an 'aesthete of misery' and tried to impose beauty on the poor world. But 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,' he told The Guardian in a 2024 interview. To Burgess, he did quite the opposite, by capturing the dignity of his subjects at their moment of need. 'This might well be enhanced by his use of black-and-white as a medium, but it's more to do with two other qualities that Salgado has in large measure: patience and curiosity,' he wrote. In 1998, Salgado and his wife founded a nonprofit, Instituto Terra, to restore the native Atlantic Forest, one of Brazil's most threatened, on their old family farm. On Friday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gifted a Salgado photo to Angolan President Joao Lourenco, in Brasilia for a state visit. It was a coincidence, Lula said. "His discontent with the fact that the world is so unequal, and his unwavering talent in portraying the reality of the oppressed, has always served as a wake-up call to the conscience of all humanity," Lula said in a statement. "For this very reason, his work will continue to be a cry for solidarity. And a reminder that we are all equal in our diversity."
Forbes
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Photo London 2025: Celebrating A Decade With Icons, Rebels, And Urgent New Voices
Polka, Sebastiao Salgado, Two Weddell seals on an iceberg, Enterprise Island, Antarctic Peninsula, 2004_© Sebastiao Salgado. Courtesy Polka Galerie Photo London celebrates its 10th anniversary with a special edition presenting a thoughtfully curated selection of the world's most seminal photographers and masters of the craft, juxtaposed with emerging talent pushing the technical and aesthetic boundaries of what constitutes photography. Expect to find a wealth of photographic imagery from all corners of the globe, spanning almost two centuries since the invention of photography by Louise Daguerre in 1830 to the present day. Part of Photo London's success appears to be its ability to capture the zeitgeist of new photographic innovations whilst appreciating the technical skill and legacy of legendary image-makers such as the Magnum photographers. Photo London is also great at championing photographic talent across generations, cultures and genders, and the 2025 edition features a wealth of talented women photographers and also embraces talent from the LGBTQI+ community. Photo London's 10th anniversary edition delivers a vibrant and layered celebration of photography's rich history and dynamic present. Returning to Somerset House with signature ambition, the fair strikes a compelling balance between honoring iconic masters and spotlighting bold, socially conscious contemporary work. This year's edition underscores photography's power not just to document but to provoke, reveal, and reimagine. A major highlight is the tribute to three titans of 20th-century photography—David Bailey, Bill Brandt, and Brassaï. Bailey's rock-and-roll portraits still exude raw charisma and irreverence; Brandt's shadowy compositions remind us why he remains the poet of British postwar imagery; and Brassaï's night-time Paris, ever-seductive and mysterious, continues to seduce new generations of viewers. These luminaries provide a spine of photographic excellence that anchors the fair's historical dimension. This is also a year where strong women photographers command deserved attention at Photo London. A standout is The Lee Miller Archives who are presenting a curated selection of Miller's war reportage with striking immediacy. Her unflinching images of World War II–which were the focus of the new film LEE starring Kate Winslet at Miller–from the liberation of Buchenwald to her unforgettable self-portrait in Hitler's bathtub, are a timely reminder of photography's role in bearing witness. Mary McCartney, meanwhile, brings a quieter intimacy with portraits that blend celebrity with a painterly softness, while Julia Fullerton-Batten stuns with a visceral, theatrical tableau of Victorian women boxing—an image that punches through the noise with feminist force and visual drama. Female Boxers by Julia Fullerton-Batten © Julia Fullerton-Batten Photo London Director, Sophie Parker, comments: 'While we are a photography specific Fair, the works exhibited go far beyond images hung on walls. Photography can include sculpture, painting, performance, fabric, moving image, and even sound, and at Photo London we celebrate photography as an art object in all its forms.' An emerging theme throughout the fair is photography's response to the climate crisis. Award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado's majestic landscapes from his Genesis series blend awe with activism, while Icelandic journalist turned photographer Ragnar Axelsson's haunting black-and-white portraits of life in the Arctic capture not only the region's stark beauty but the existential fragility of its communities and ecosystems. These works demand contemplation, offering not just spectacle but urgent commentary. Ragnar Axelsson 'Sled Dogs on Sea Ice, Thule', 2010, Arctic Heroes, Archival Print Ragnar Axelsson Courtesy of Qerndu Gallery. In the Discovery section curated by Charlotte Jansen, Photo London proves its ongoing commitment to diverse, underrepresented voices, with a notably strong showing from LGBTQI photographers. Jesse Glazard's introspective images of queer soldiers in Ukraine are both tender and defiant, exploring identity, resilience, and love under siege. Vivienne Maricevic's archival photographs of the trans community in Times Square in the late 1980s and early 1990s are equally powerful—intimate, gritty portraits that preserve a vibrant yet vulnerable moment in queer history. Jesse Glazzard, Oleksandr, 2024 © Jesse Glazzard An overshadowed 'muse' and civil right photographer are foregrounded by Amar Gallery who are presenting the revolutionary work of Dora Maar–often relegated to the role of Picasso's muse and lover, yet an accomplished artist in her own right–with the photography of Stephen Shames, official photographer for the Black Panther party. A poignant juxtaposition in an era when women's rights and racial equality are still threatened by some societies. Amar Gallery, Black Panther Series © Stephen Shames As Photo London turns ten, it's clear that the fair is not resting on nostalgia. Instead, it charts a forward-looking path that honors photography's rich lineage while embracing its ever-expanding social and cultural role. The 2025 edition doesn't just celebrate photography—it challenges us to see differently, feel more deeply, and remember what is at stake in the world around us. © Lee Miller Archives, England 2025. All rights reserved. Highlights of a particularly stellar line-up to mark the 10th birthday of Photo London include era-defining fashion photographs and portraits of 20th Century icons including Dylan and Basquiat by David Bailey at Dellasposa (some of Bailey's iconic images of London are also featured in London Lives); a curated selection of vintage photographs by Brassaï and Bill Brandt at Grob Gallery (Geneva); wartime reportage photography from the Lee Miller Archives–including her iconic 1941 image Fire Masks, Downshire Hill–presented at Photo London ahead of Miller's Tate Britain retrospective this autumn; a special display of platinum prints from former Photo London Master of Photography Sebastião Salgado's legendary Genesis series at Polka Galerie (Paris); Ragnar Axelsson's atmospheric monochrome images of man's interaction with animals and the desolate landscape of the arctic presented by Icelandic publisher and gallery Qerndu; Mary McCartney's poignant imagery featured in the London Lives exhibition; Vivienne Maricevic's photographic series documenting the trans community of Times Square in New York City in the late 80s and early 90s at New Discretions gallery, and Jesse Glazzard's brave series of images documenting queer soldiers in Ukraine in the Discovery Section. Mary McCartney 'Embrace' Photo London Discovery section Curator, Charlotte Jansen, said: 'The Discovery section at Photo London has always been, for me, the most exciting area of the Fair. As the name implies, it's where you might find things that you've never seen before, which is quite a rarity these days, given our image-saturated culture. I am excited to see a sharp shift away from portraiture towards semi-abstraction and abstraction across many booths this year and to witness the ways contemporary artists are using the camera in a painterly way, like a brush, with captivating results.' Photo London's 10th anniversary edition proves that photography is an ever evolving art form that in the right hands has the ability to capture the most urgent, poignant, life-affirming images of our lives. Photo London is at Somerset House until 18th May, 2025. © David Bailey
