My reaction
His commitment to the project: single minded, truly impressive
- Project took 8 years to complete
- Images (by definition) were all taken in remote locations: no modern conveniences to return to at the end of the day
- The volume of high quality images shows a patience to wait for the 'decisive moment'
- The temperatures in the Antarctica must have been close to impossible to work in
- Getting funding from sponsors must have required significant effort
Compositional Strength: his images are beautifully made (see images below)
- Light: in nearly all of his images light plays a huge role, at a minimum adding to mood (e.g. Elephant Seal Calves) , if not the narrative (e.g. Elephant). In some the shafts of light piercing mist or smoke have a religious or mystical quality (e.g. Brooks Range, Elephant, Cattle Camp)
- Lines and shapes: his images have either strong lines and/or shapes that lead the eye around the image (e.g. Elephant Seal Calves - the 2 seals create a line into the centre of the image, which is also the apex of an implied triangle of penguins in the middle ground; Elephant - the diagonal light adds to the sense of motion of the fleeing elephant; Brooks Range - the eye travels along the light reflected from the valley river; Albatrosses - the wings of the flying albatross catch the eye and lead it along its length)
- Texture: many of his images convey texture strongly (e.g. Elephant Seal Calves - the folds of blubber of the seals contrasted by the edge-lit fur of the penguin chick). Get too close to the image at the exhibition and the effect gives way to edges that have been over-sharpened) (e.g. Brooks Range - the folds in the hills as lit through the clouds)
- Contrasts: he uses the eye's attraction to light (over dark) and high contrast (over low contrast) to isolate his subject (e.g Elephant Seals - the contrast of the folds of blubber attract attention; Albatrosses - the black: white contrast of the colony of birds in the foreground)
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| Elephant seal calves, South Georgia |
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| Brooks Range mountains |
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| Elephant, Kafur National Park, Zambia |
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| Albatrosses, Steeple Jason Island (nr Falklands) |
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| Cattle Camp at Amak, Southern Sudan |
- No, if you want your art to reflect the real world. How relevant is wilderness shot in theatrical light to nearly all human experience? Not very, surely? Aren't there more serious problems in the world to address? As Cartier-Bresson said of Ansel Adams (another master photographer of wilderness) and Edward Weston: 'The world is falling to pieces and all Adams and Weston photograph are rocks and trees'.
- Yes, if 'art is not a mirror to reflect reality but a hammer to shape it' (Bertolt Brecht). Salgado's operatic and beautiful images may not resonate with many critics, but are likely to do so with a mass, largely urban audience, cut off as we are from natural land and yearning for greater access to it. Presumably, Salgado is trying to connect not with an artistic elite but with the wider population, thereby to add greater momentum to the cause of protecting the environment.
Notes on Salgado
Key points from 'A Cold Light', Jan Parker, New Yorker magazine (April 2005)
Life and career
- Son of a Brazilian cattle rancher
- Trained as an economist
- Former Marxist activist, his activities put him in conflict with the military regime in Brazil of his youth, he moved to Paris in 1968, did a PhD in economics and in 1970 picked up his wife's camera, starting his career in photography
- He was a jobbing photojournalist until he captured images following the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
- Known for his photojournalistic projects with a global reach and social conscience
- Talks of his photography as only a tool in the world of information, not art. 'I'm not an artist...I'm a storyteller'
- His work has an emotional impact - not least in its underlying argument for a common sense of common humanity.
- Works closely with wife, Lelia, as his editor and business manager: 'he knows how to take pictures, I know how to exploit them'
- His major projects usually take 5 years or more
- Workers and Migrations, studies of people displaced by war and economic change (from globalisation)
- Salgado makes frequent use of the work: dignity. Often has photographed people looking into his camera with a head-on stare 'we are resourceful, we can cope, but what you see is not good'
- However, his emphasis on dignity means that he rarely shows people enraged by their condition or in acts of resistance to achieve change
- 'For me the good pictures are against the Light. Against the Light, you have shapes, the forms get a contour. It's not easy but I like it.'
- Take your image at the strongest moment: perfect light, perfect subject, perfect background
- Taking pictures is a pleasure but also a discipline - he isn't the kind of photographer who takes casual images. His intensity and commitment are renown - 'like visiting an art gallery to study a single portrait for a full afternoon'.
- He is not religious but attended a Salesian school, religious architecture and iconography are embedded in his work: shafts of light, poses echoing martyred saints
Some criticisms
- 'Salgado is a good editor but sometimes his books are a little too fat' (Robert Pledge)
- Sometimes he has an awkward relationship with other photographers. He explains:'when you produce a lot, you take a lot of space, and people are afraid of you'. His departure from Magnum in the 1990s was 'a big fight' over the structure of the agency.
- 'Probably my last story in photography', approaching 70 years of age
- Inspired by Instituto Terra, the Salgados non profit environmental foundation which is reforesting 1,700 acres of former farmland in Brazil. The land belonged to his father. Salgado witnessed how the forest turned to dust as his father brought more cattle onto the land
- His intention: '46% of the world of the planet is not destroyed. I must show this, take pictures that show that it's necessary to preserve these places.'
- First time Salgado has photographed wildlife on a grand scale and environments unchanged by human progress, after 30 years of photographing miserably changing environments and people living in the middle of economic and political upheaval. His aim is to show the earth as it was some 4,000 years ago.
- He used 4 medium format cameras , a switch from 35mm Leicas and also to using volunteers to carry equipment. Now I know why - Working with Large Format Cameras
- Project was mainly funded by deals with magazines and newspapers (Paris Match, Guardian, Rolling Stone, Visao), grants - including $300,000 from the Christensen Fund - and the 'occasional' advertising assignment (His asking rate is $30,000 per day)
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