Latest news with #SebastiãoSalgado
Newsweek
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Bearing Witness in Black and White—Sebastião Salgado's Photos Against Environmental and Human Injustice
Brazil is a beast soaked in the sins of environmental destruction and human rights violations. This reality is captured perfectly in the late award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado's haunting black-and-white photographs of faceless gold miners, their clothes torn, climbing makeshift ladders in the depths of the Brazilian Amazon. The iconic image, taken in 1986 at Serra Pelada, one of the world's largest open-pit gold mines that operated from 1980 to 1992, immortalizes both the desperation of men driven by poverty and the staggering environmental cost of their pursuit. The New York Times named it one of "The 25 Photos that Defined the Modern Age." The facelessness of the miners acts as a visual metaphor for how dehumanizing conditions erase individuality, as part of the process of othering. In a different image, Salgado presents a tense standoff between a miner and a police officer; here, their faces are visible, as are those of the men surrounding them, a powerful tableau of oppression and resistance. The bleakness of this reality is not confined to the past; it persists in our present. The late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado poses for a portrait at Somerset House, in London, on April 18, 2024. The late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado poses for a portrait at Somerset House, in London, on April 18, 2024. BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP via Getty Images Salgado was a legendary photographer. His lens bore witness to humanity's darkest injustices and most profound resilience. Salgado's work denounced human rights abuses, environmental devastation, social inequality, and the ruthless greed of industry, forcing mainstream attention on issues too often ignored or sanitized. In his final book, Amazônia, Salgado with his signature style, captured the lives of Indigenous communities, their sustainable traditions, and the lush river landscapes of the Amazon Rainforest. These photos show a world relatively untouched by modern civilization. His work presents a vivid record of what is at stake and a striking contrast to his earlier images of exploitation and ruin. Amazônia stands as a testament to the true Guardians of the Earth. Visitors attend the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. Visitors attend the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. DIEGO NIGRO/AFP via Getty Images Salgado's work cuts deeper than glossy PR images from corporations touting "social responsibility," or celebrities in face paint posing with Indigenous children for a photo-op in countries they cannot name. His images matter more than the hollow speeches delivered by politicians at international summits, few of whom ever face real risk or meet with Indigenous communities. Salgado himself paid a personal price for chronicling humanity's pain; he admitted last year that his time in hazardous environments had taken a toll. Salgado developed severe leukemia, which came from malaria he contracted in Indonesia in 2010. Another iconic Salgado photograph, this time from Kuwait: A Desert on Fire, shows a man silhouetted against a raging inferno. The fire was one of the hundreds of oil wells set ablaze by dictator Saddam Hussein's retreating forces in 1991. The series documents the displacement of families, efforts to contain the disaster, the toil of workers, and the lasting environmental scars. The images speak to the devastation wrought by oil addiction and war, echoing in the present as populist leaders like Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro threatens new conflicts over natural resources, eyeing Guyana's Essequibo region with predatory intent. Maduro's antagonist, President Donald Trump, isn't inclined to environmental policies. He left the Paris climate agreement and dismantled the measures taken by his predecessor, Joe Biden; still he keeps his word by not pretending to go green. Meanwhile, Brazil's President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva speaks often of the climate crisis but still invests in oil instead of properly championing green alternatives. A visitor attends the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. A visitor attends the exhibition of "Gold: Serra Pelada" from the late Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado at the CAIXA Cultural Recife Cultural Center in the city of Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil on May 23, 2025. DIEGO NIGRO/AFP via Getty Images Brazil has made progress in environmental and Indigenous rights since the dark days of Jair Bolsonaro's presidency, but the bar was painfully low. The Yanomami people continue to endure a humanitarian disaster plagued by diseases like malaria and diarrhea, while their land isn't completely free from illegal mining. Nevertheless, Brazil prepares to host COP30 and dreams of global environmental leadership. Ironically, Lula's administration and the Brazilian Congress are advancing plans to drill for oil offshore from the Amazon. In 2024, global average temperatures exceeded the Paris climate agreement threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. While Lula and Maduro salivate over oil, the world edges ever closer to the apocalyptic vision in Salgado's photos of Kuwait. The urgency of Salgado's work is clearer now than ever. His images delivered a gut-punch that transcended headlines and front-page news, shaped global conversations, and proved that he was not merely a photojournalist, but an artist of conscience. By showcasing tragedy and injustice in the realm of art, Salgado's photographs entered mainstream culture, finding their way into galleries, media coverage, and the living rooms of ordinary people. For many, it was the first time the gravity of these distant crises became impossible to ignore. The mourning of Salgado's passing in Brazil and around the world is a testament to the power and necessity of his life's work. His legacy is to expose, provoke, and bear witness through art, to the realities of a troubled, yet beautiful, world. Gabriel Leão works as a journalist and is based in São Paulo, Brazil. He has written for outlets in Brazil, the U.K., Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. such as WIRED, Al Jazeera, Dazed, Vice, Dicebreaker, Scarleteen, Women's Media Center, Clash, Anime Herald, Anime Feminist, and Brazil's ESPN Magazine having started his career at Brazil's TV Cultura as an intern. Leão also holds a master's degree in communications and a post-grad degree in foreign relations. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Forbes
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
The World Of Sebastião Salgado At Peter Fetterman Gallery In Santa Monica
Sebastião Salgado 1944-2025, Eastern Part of the Brooks Range, Alaska, 2009 "The World of Sebastião Salgado' at Peter Fetterman Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica (on view through September 1), is a large-scale Memorial exhibition of prints by the master photographer Sebastião Salgado who died May 23, 2025. The gallery also has many of Salgado's amazing books, some of them signed, which are available for sale. Sebastião Salgado, 2019 Salgado is a master, an incomparable artist whose work took him to some 122 countries over the course of his career. Born in Brazil, Salgado first career was as an economist. In the 1980s, he began his career as a freelance photographer capturing news events. By chance, he was present at the assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan in Washington DC, and Salgado's images earned him the front page in newspapers all over the world. But that was just his start. It was his photographs of forgotten people, the tribes of the Amazon, the workers on the oil fields of Kuwait, and his photographs of disappearing nature in the Amazon and Antarctica that remain his unforgettable legacy. 'Through the lens of his camera, Sebastião tirelessly fought for a more just, humane and ecological world,' Mr. Salgado's family said in a statement to the New York Times. 'Rich in humanistic content, this work offers a sensitive perspective on the most disadvantaged populations and addresses the environmental issues threatening our planet.' Sebastião Salgado 1944-2025 Korubo, Amazonas, Brazil, 2017 Salgado's photos are primarily in Black and White. The exhibition at Peter Fetterman Gallery gives a sense of the amazing range of his work as well as his many talents. Salgado had an uncanny ability to put his subjects at ease and to photograph them in ways that seem completely authentic to who they are. His photos do not glorify, fetishize, or make his subjects seem other than who they are. Yet he renders them with great humanity and dignity. Sebastião Salgado 1944-2025 Gold Mine, Serra Pelada, Brazil. (Figure Eight) Salgado's landscapes are artworks of immaculate detail and composition. Even when he photographed the workers of a gold mine, the photos had their own beauty and power. That was Salgado's gift. In a quote shared by Peter Fetterman, Salgado explained how the work he did, in particular his photo project, GENESIS, transformed him. 'I did 8 years of trips, 8 months a year. I went to 32 countries. But the big trip that I did was inside myself. I discovered that I am part of all this, that I am part of the animals. That we are part of everything alive in the planet. We are part of this huge equilibrium. You know for me this was the most important thing. We come out of the planet. We must go back to the planet."
Mint
14-06-2025
- Automotive
- Mint
Why Leica is taking the long view on India's high-end camera market
Founded in 1914, Leica, headquartered in Wetzlar, Germany, is among the most storied names in photography. The high-end camera-maker, which has legions of (mostly wealthy) fans, is known for its precision-engineered cameras that have shaped photojournalism and art, from Henri Cartier-Bresson's decisive moments to Sebastião Salgado's socially conscious imagery. Still handcrafted in Germany, Leica cameras are as much prized tools as they are cult objects, with enthusiasts drawn to their minimalist design and mechanical purity. The company, which registered sales revenues of 554 million euros in 2023-2024, sells a range of digital and film cameras, including its flagship M and SL systems. Prices in India start around ₹ 3 lakh for certified pre-owned models and go well above ₹ 8 lakh for new ones. Leica's India journey began modestly seven years ago with its first store in Delhi. Last month, the company, which operates through distributor-partners in the country, opened its second outlet here, this time in Mumbai. In this interview, Sunil Kaul, managing director for Leica Asia-Pacific, speaks about India's evolving camera market, why Leica isn't chasing volume, and how watches and smartphones fit into its legacy. Leica store in Mumbai. Two of the biggest issues in India are import duties and the cost of doing retail. That's a big part of why it took us seven years. But also, we wanted to build a community of people who love Leica. And that takes time. It gave us the courage to then look at Mumbai. Of course, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad—these cities have always been on our minds. But to sustain something long-term, you need that community. Also, our portfolio has grown a lot in these years. The target audience is wider. We even do pre-owned now. If you can't buy a Q3 for ₹ 6 lakh, you can buy one for ₹ 3 lakh, certified. So timing was key. We could've done Mumbai earlier—we did the usual thing, looking at malls and all—but again, retail is not fully developed yet in India. At the moment, I would say India's not even in the top five in terms of revenue. And I can't even talk about margins. With 18 per cent GST on a regular camera, and camera bodies or lenses having 10 to 15 per cent duty, and accessories going up to 25 per cent, it's really not a margin market for us right now. It's more of a strategically important market. China and Japan are very, very large, developed markets, and there's strong acceptance of handcrafted tools there. The knowledge is there, too. In India, it's a very different stage of evolution. Our professional photography base here is small. But most of those professionals do own a Leica. They may not use it for their daily work, but for their soul photography, their artistic work, they always turn to Leica. India is like a dum biryani. You have to keep it on a low flame and let it simmer. Maybe with new WTO rules and more favourable duties and taxes, and with easier entry rules for wholly foreign-owned companies, things will open up. You've often spoken about not chasing volume, not going after the wedding photography market. How do you sustain that approach in a market like India, where scale often drives success? There are two components to this. One is, we make a few for a few. And everything is mostly handcrafted, handmade in Germany. So I'm always running behind supply, because demand is higher than supply. And when people acquire a Leica, or invest in a Leica, they're also ready to wait. This is not something you need tomorrow morning or else your world ends. I've been in the company for 18 years. I've never cancelled a single order. That just shows me we don't need to push things out. Because we're not in the commodity business. We're in the business of people enjoying this tool. Everybody is into photography now. It's a large pyramid. And maybe many people are at the base. Some have graduated in the middle. And they realise very quickly that there is only that much you can do with a phone camera. And if you want to really become a top photographer, you have to get a camera. Once people realise that, they start moving upwards in that pyramid, and there's only one company which is on the top of the hill, and that's us. Leica brings its expertise in optical engineering, design, imaging software and consumer experience related to the art of photography to the partnership with Xiaomi. It offers us an excellent opportunity to further extend our proven imaging expertise into the smartphone segment. Smartphones make a very important contribution to the world of photography and, for us, it opens doors to new target groups. Still handcrafted in Germany, Leica cameras are as much prized tools as they are cult objects, with enthusiasts drawn to their minimalist design and mechanical purity. Your move into watches, about three years ago, was quite unexpected. How is that auxiliary business doing and what was the thinking behind it? Leica's founder Ernst Leitz was a trained mechanical watchmaker before he specialised in precision optics. And all these years, everything we made was essentially a mechanical engineering product, right up until around 15 to 18 years ago, when digital technology started evolving. Until then, we were only doing film cameras. Even the automatic DSLRs that existed then — that was all in collaboration with Minolta and others. So if anyone has a legitimate claim to making the best mechanical film cameras, with 1,500 to 1,600 parts coming together, then yes, we have the knowledge and experience to put together 280 parts for a watch. We work with an OEM partner to make the ZM series because we're still developing. We have some in-house movements, some patents. This is not Leica making perfume or leather belts. We're making something that ties back to who we are. The same goes for projection systems. They require lenses. That's part of our history too. Our first projector came out in 1926. So this thinking is consistent. We'll always make things that are true to the DNA of the brand. About 85 per cent of the business today still comes from our core products — cameras, lenses, binoculars, and sport optics. The remaining 15 per cent is everything else.
CNN
31-05-2025
- General
- CNN
Unpacking Trump's Targeting of Universities & Foreign Students - Amanpour - Podcast on CNN Audio
Unpacking Trump's Targeting of Universities & Foreign Students Amanpour 42 mins As President Trump and his allies escalate the administration's battle on colleges, and on Harvard specifically, Steven Levitsky, Harvard professor and author of 'How Democracies Die,' joins Christiane to discuss the reshaping of knowledge in America. Then, best-selling German author Daniel Kehlmann speaks with Christiane about his new book 'The Director," exploring what it was like for artists like G.W. Pabst who made films for Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis. Marking 600 days of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Christiane highlights both Jeremy Diamond's report on Israel's fight to get back the 58 remaining hostages in Hamas captivity and Oren Lieberman's story on the chaotic aid delivery to starving Palestinians this week. Christiane also talks to Wilfred Frost, son of the legendary TV host David Frost, about his father's iconic interviews with the likes of Richard Nixon, Yasser Arafat and Elton John, and a new documentary series following his storied career. From her archive, Christiane pays tribute to award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Finally, marking 45 years since CNN's founding, Christiane revisits her conversation with company founder Ted Turner about how he changed the news business forever.
Mail & Guardian
30-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Mail & Guardian
There are new killers on the loose
Purple haze: Jacaranda in bloom are beauties, but condemn the aliens. There it was in stark black and white, the sad news that legendary Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado had died at the age of 81 in Paris. It is terrible news but the great man lived a full life travelling to the remotest corners of the world to document the lives of people, the environment and the relationship between the two. Sometimes brutal but always beautiful, his images of human suffering led some to call him the 'aesthete of misery'. Probably his most well-known image is the one of hundreds of workers at the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil swarming up crude wooden ladders weighed down by heavy containers. But there are thousands of other equally unforgettable images — always black and white and often with the contrasts of light accentuated — from Salgado's trips to the wildest areas on Earth, from the Amazon to the Arctic. In the documentary The Salt of the Earth, co-produced by German director Wim Wenders and Salgado's son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the acclaimed photographer, a man after my own heart, says: 'We humans are terrible animals.' Something that I didn't know about Salgado is that after experiencing the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, in 1998 he put aside his cameras and founded the Instituto Terra. In a grand reforesting project he planted hundreds of thousands of trees in the Rio Doce valley in Brazil. Amid the relentless barrage of stories about the forests being chopped down, or cleared to make room for planting, or just burnt in raging fires caused by climate change, these projects offer a glimmer of hope. And the sheer numbers of the trees planted are truly awe-inspiring. India has an impressive number of inspiring characters who are leading the way in reforestation projects. Jaggi Vasudev, more commonly referred to as Sadhguru, founder of the Isha Foundation, says his ambition is to plant 2.4 billion trees. And with his gleaming white turban and flowing white beard the yogi, mystic, teacher and author has the gravitas to convince even the doubters that this ambitious plan is completely achievable. Here in Johannesburg we are constantly told we live in 'the biggest man-made forest in the world' with more than 10 million trees growing in the city. But Johannesburg is in danger of losing its place as the leading tree destination in the world, because our trees are not immune to the city's dangerously high crime rate. As yet the trees don't have a category in the crime stats, but if the rate of attrition continues to climb, the police commissioner will be reeling off some depressing figures of deaths, damage and murders. The biggest culprit is the aptly named shot hole borer, also known as PSHB (the P stands for polyphagous, which means the beetle can feed on multiple types of trees). Here is an expert definition of this criminal's modus operandi: 'The beetle infests trees by tunnelling deep into the trunk or branches and depositing a fungus that effectively poisons — and eventually kills — the tree. If the tree is a PSHB 'reproductive host' species, then the borer will reproduce in the tree at an alarming rate: a reproductive host tree can house up to 100 000 borer beetles. The offspring then fly out of the host tree and infest more trees.' Evidence of this habitual criminal's killing spree can be seen all over Johannesburg. Bare, blackened tree skeletons with rotting branches. Unfortunately the lethal little bug is not the only criminal attacking our trees. Humans won't let a two-millimetre sized insect from Vietnam outdo them when it comes to murdering trees. I have seen jacaranda trees viciously attacked by chainsaw-wielding suburbanites because they are unhappy with the 'mess' from the leaves and the beautiful mauve blossoms when they fall. I have seen a majestic plane tree in Bez Valley ruthlessly sawn down at ground level because a homeowner had opened a hair salon in his garage and didn't want the tree to impede the entrance. I have seen massive oak trees subjected to hideously slow deaths by criminals who set fire to piles of the trees' own leaves at the base of the trunk. These are trees that are on the pavement and supposedly belong to the city, but much like the smash-and-grabbers at traffic lights or armed hijackers who drive off with your car, not many of the tree killers are brought to justice. The problem here might be that all of the trees mentioned are what is politely termed 'exotics' brought in from Europe and South America to line the streets of the first suburbs of the rapidly expanding city. Some, like the jacaranda, adapted so well to their new home and reproduced so abundantly that they have been declared 'alien invasive plants guzzling up all the town's water and are harmful to the environment and surrounding species'. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Even by today's standards the tree situation cannot be called a genocide but Sebastião Salgado would surely have found inspiration here for his searing photographs.
