Sebastian Salgado discovered the art of photography almost by accident. He once worked as an economist. And now it is considered one of the most successful and famous photographers on planet Earth. How was his fate so formed? How did he go to his success? You can read about all this in the article.
Youth
Sebastian Salgado was born on February 8, 1944 in the small town of Aimores, where there were only sixteen thousand inhabitants. In those years, about seventy percent of the area of this region was occupied by forest, which is now considered the "lungs of the planet." Then the territory of the Brazilian selva was twice as large as, say, France. Now, the area of this forest is only seven percent of its original size. When Sebastian was young, his hometown could offer him only an elementary school. Therefore, in order to study further, he was forced to leave him and go to Vitoria, the capital of the state of Espirito Santo. There he graduated from high school in 1962 and entered the university. Having received a diploma in 1967, he married Lelia Deluyz Vanik.
Maturity
Sebastian Salgado soon became the father of two boys - Giuliano and Rodrigo. However, a great test awaited him. The youngest son had a terrible disease - Down syndrome. The family moved to Sao Paulo, where Sebastian received another master's degree in economics, and his wife completed a musical education. She graduated from the conservatory as a pianist.
Then, in 1969, they moved to Europe, namely to Paris. There, Sebastian worked on his doctoral dissertation, and Lelia began to study as an architect. In 1971, the family again changed their place of residence. Sebastian is invited to work as an economist for the International Coffee Organization. He travels a lot, participating in various missions sponsored by the World Bank. He was especially often in Africa. It was there that he began to take his first photographs.
New career
Once, returning to London from another trip, Sebastian Salgado realized that the pictures he had taken dragged him more and more. He even decided to abandon the economy in order to devote his life to photography. Therefore, he and his wife returned to Paris, which they considered the only city suitable for this occupation. At first he worked as a freelancer, but since 1974, Sebastian joins the Sigma agency. It sent him to Portugal, Angola and Mozambique, where the photographer gradually honed his art.
Then he replaced the employer. The new agency - "Gamma" - gave him the opportunity to travel across almost all of Europe, Africa and Latin America. At this time, his wife completed her education and acquired the profession of urban planner. In 1977, Sebastian began working on a huge series of photographs dedicated to the life of Indians and peasants in Latin America.
Humanitarian missions
In 1979, the photographer again changed his job. He was hired by the Magnum Corporation, to which he devoted fifteen years of his life. At this time, he not only became famous for his reports from different countries and photographs published in the most prestigious magazines in the world, but finally completed his epic about the life of ordinary people in the south of the American continent. Based on it, in 1984 he released the first book. It was called "Other America" and came out simultaneously in the USA, France and Spain.
So Sebastian Salgado, whose photographs made him a world celebrity, found his true path in life. He tried to talk about the situation of poor people and helped them, including the fact that for two years he collaborated with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, fixing on their instructions terrible hunger scenes in Africa. He published two books under the general title “Sahel” - “A Man in Despair” and “The End of the Road”, and also organized many photo exhibitions. So he supported the work of Doctors Without Borders.
Workers and Migrations
In 1986-1992, Sebastian Salgado visited twenty-three countries to create a series of works on grueling manual labor. They were published in 1993 in the book "Workers". This work was distributed around the world with a circulation of 100 thousand copies, and an exhibition of photographs was held in more than 60 museums.
As a continuation of “Workers”, the master begins the next series of shots called “Migrations”. This project brought him to 43 countries. He traveled across all continents to show the fate of people forced to leave the countryside in order to move to cities. For example, he shot nine megacities, whose population has grown sharply in recent decades. His pictures from the series “Portraits of Children of Migrations” were very popular. Posters were made on the basis of these photographs, new books were published, special training programs were created, and three million people saw the exhibitions.
But Sebastian Salgado, whose biography was the subject of our little research, would not have been able to cope with all this without the help of his wife. It was she who was the main creative element of the entire popularization of her husband’s art. Therefore, in 1994, they decided to create their own business.
Amazonaz Images
Perhaps this agency can be called the smallest in the world. But it was here that Sebastian Salgado and his wife were able to fully launch their activities dedicated to revealing the dark sides of modern society, the horrors of war, the suffering of poor and hungry people, far from the prosperous life of rich countries. Masters can be called the author of social photography. At the center of his art are noble faces, although often distorted by suffering. All his characters have a deep inner world, which only emphasizes the competent composition of frames and the ability to play with light and shadow. Although some publicists accused him of aesthetizing pain, in fact, Sebastian is simply trying to draw attention to problems that no one wants to see in order to force them to solve the problems of that part of humanity that everyone has given up on for a long time.
