|
|
Sebastião Salgado is currently engaged in a project which will take a full eight years to complete. Universally regarded as one of the world’s finest photographers, he is convinced the subject chosen for this huge commitment - the future of the environment - is among the most important challenges facing humanity.
“What we do to our environment is as important as what we do with our health, our employment, our economics,” the 61-year-old Paris-based Salgado told Enter.
For what he calls The Genesis project, the man who worked as an economist at the World Bank until he discovered photography in the early 1970s is seeking out some of the ever-decreasing number of places on earth untouched by modern humanity.
So far he and his cameras have been to the Galapagos Islands, several parts of Africa and South America and Antarctica.
“For all the damage already caused to the environment, a world of purity, even innocence, can still be found in these wilderness areas”, said Salgado at the start of the project. “I now intend to explore this world to record the unblemished faces of nature and humanity”.
Eighteen months on, he says photography has an important part to play in raising awareness about the environment but it cannot change things alone.
“Photography contributes to a much larger flow of information. I work as part of a bigger movement which includes many organizations such as the UN Environmental Program. It is this which can improve the situation, not the photography alone”.
Renowned, among many other things, for two big photographic projects about workers and mass-migration, both of which became successful books and traveling exhibitions, Salgado turned his attention to the environment during a visit to his native Brazil, where he saw the damage to Indian homelands caused by deforestation and mining.
“I shoot globally and I want to show globally,” he says. “My photographs give the person who does not have the opportunity to go to places the chance to do so and have a look”.
Although he is considered to be one of the masters of photographic concept and composition, he says the photographs in themselves are not the most important part of his work. What matters most, he insists, is the journalism.
For anyone considering following in his footsteps, Salgado says preparation is vital, as is flexibility.
“You don’t have to be a specialist in animal photography to take shots of animals nor a specialist in landscape to take landscapes. Become aware of the environmental issues by reading the increasing amount of coverage there is about them in the Press and magazines and you will come up with many nice stories to shoot. Then move from one subject to another. Remember, it’s not the individual photographs which count. For a photojournalist, it’s telling the story.”
“As humans, we consider we are an advanced species. But it is important to recognize we are part of the planet, part of a global system. We must be prepared and aware”.
For the technically-minded, Salgado shoots only on film, in black and white. And it will continue that way, he says.
“There is no digital black and white, I don’t work on a computer or manage a digital archive. The technology is not the point,” he adds, returning to a familiar theme, “what is important is the story”.
Do you agree with Sebastião Salgado about the importance of photographing the disappeaeing elements of the environment? If you do - or you don't - let us know. Click here and email us.
Links:
AmazonasImages
|
|
Sea lions at Puerto Egas in James Bay, Santiago Island,
The Galapagos, Ecuador, 2004.
view full size (30855 b)
|
|
