Photography is a "mirror of society": Sebastiao Salgado April 21, 2024

Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado is best known for his work in the Amazon (BENJAMIN CREMEL)

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Photography is a "mirror of society": Sebastiao Salgado

He may be 80 years old, but Sebastiao Salgado, the Brazilian photojournalist who has been documenting the world around us for five decades, is not ready to hang up his camera just yet.

Salgado, who is best known for his work in the Amazon, insists that there is still a need to "raise awareness" about the deforestation of the planet.

"Photography is the mirror of society," he said in an interview with AFP at the start of a London retrospective of his 50-year career.

Despite his advanced age, Salgado is still working and insists on what he sees as a necessity, "to make people aware that together we can do things differently".

In this way, he says, "We will be able to save this great forest on which our biodiversity depends, and also this great cultural reserve that the indigenous tribes living in the Amazon represent".

Together with his wife Lelia, he founded the Instituto Terra in 1998, which is committed to the reforestation of the Brazilian Amazon and the planet in general.

The self-taught photographer has won numerous international awards for his portraits of societies around the world, most recently focusing on the peoples of the Amazon basin.

"We have lost 18.2 percent of the Amazon region. But it's not just the Brazilians or other countries in the region that have destroyed it, it's our consumer society, because of a terrible need for consumption, for profit," he said.

- Second tragedy" -

However, deforestation of the planet is far from his only concern.

Water scarcity is a "second tragedy, just as important as global warming", he says.

The exhibition, which is on display at the city's Somerset House until May 6, features 50 of his photographs.

"It's a selection. You can't represent 50 years of his career in 50 photographs. (But) each one represents a moment in my life that was very important," he said.

The exhibition comes a month after Salgado was announced as the winner of Outstanding Contribution to Photography at the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards 2024.

"This is the reward for a lifetime's work," he said with obvious gratitude. "A photographer has the privilege of being where things happen".

"People tell me I'm an artist, but I tell them no, I'm a photographer and it's a great privilege to be one. I am an emissary of the society I belong to".

Entering his ninth decade, Salgado has no plans to retire, and he says he's wasting no time thinking about his legacy.

"I have 50 years of my career behind me and I am 80 years old. I'm closer to death than anything else. (...) But I keep photographing, I keep working.

"I don't worry about how people will remember me. Photos are my life, nothing else."

Pablo SAN ROMAN

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