SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian photographer and environmentalist Sebastião Salgado, recognized for his award-winning photographs of nature and humanity, died at 81 from leukemia, his household mentioned Friday.
“Through the lens of his camera, Sebastião tirelessly fought for a more just, humane, and ecological world,” Salgado’s family said in a statement. “As a photographer who traveled the globe continuously, he contracted a particular form of malaria in 2010 in Indonesia while working on his Genesis project. Fifteen years later, complications from this illness developed into severe leukemia, which ultimately took his life.”
Earlier, Instituto Terra, which was based by Salgado and his spouse, and the French Academy of Superb Arts, of which he was a member, knowledgeable his loss of life, however didn’t present particulars on the circumstances or the place he died.
“Sebastião was more than one of the best photographers of our time,” Instituto Terra mentioned in a press release. “His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, (brought) the power of transformative action.”
One in all Brazil’s most well-known artists, although he all the time insisted he was a photographer first, Salgado had his life and work portrayed within the documentary movie “The Salt of the Earth” (2014), co-directed by Wim Wenders and his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.
‘An authentic and warm man’
He acquired a lot of awards, and was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US in 1992 and to the French Academy of Superb Arts in 2016.
“I pay tribute to the memory of an exceptional man — remarkable for his moral integrity, his charisma, and his commitment to serving art. He leaves behind a monumental body of work,” composer Petitgirard, secretary of the French Academy of Superb Arts, mentioned in a press release.
François-Bernard Mâche, a significant French composer who labored with Salgado for his exhibition “Aqua Mater” in Paris, mentioned the Brazilian referred to as him an “authentic and warm man”.
“His gaze transformed landscapes, and beyond the spectacular, he reached a kind of inner truth (…). With him, photography fulfilled one of its highest ambitions by going far beyond mere appearances,” Mâche advised The Related Press.
Black and white
Born in 1944 within the metropolis of Aimores, within the countryside of the Minas Gerais state in Brazil, Salgado moved to France in 1969 as Brazil endured a navy dictatorship. He began to totally dedicate his time to images in 1973, years after his economics diploma.
His model is marked by black-and-white imagery, wealthy tonality, and emotionally charged eventualities. He had a selected curiosity in impoverished communities.
His fundamental works embrace the current “Amazonia” collection, “Workers,” which exhibits guide labor around the globe, and “Exodus” (often known as “Migrations” or “Sahel”), which paperwork folks in transit, together with refugees and slum residents.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who acquired Salgado’s assist all through his political profession, requested a minute of silence throughout a ceremony within the capital metropolis of Brasilia to honor “one of the greatest, if not the greatest, photographer the world has ever produced.”
“His nonconformity with the fact that the world is so unequal and his stubborn talent in portraying the reality of the oppressed always served as a wake-up call for the conscience of all humanity,” Lula mentioned. “Salgado did not only use his eyes and his camera to portray people: he also used the fullness of his soul and his heart.”
Love for the Amazon
Salgado and his spouse had been working for the reason that Nineties to revive a part of the Atlantic Forest in Minas Gerais. In 1998, they turned a plot of land they owned right into a nature reserve, based on Salgado’s biography on the French Academy of Superb Arts’ web site. That very same 12 months, they created Instituto Terra, which promotes reforestation and environmental schooling.
Salgado and his spouse, Lélia Wanick Salgado, based Amazonas Photos, an company that completely handles his work.
He’s additionally survived by his sons Juliano and Rodrigo.
Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, which revealed a number of of Salgado’s works over the past many years, mentioned he just lately cancelled a gathering with journalists within the French metropolis of Reims attributable to well being issues. He was scheduled to attend an exhibition with works by his son Rodrigo for a church in the identical metropolis on Saturday, the day by day reported.
An exhibition of about 400 of Salgado’s works is at present on show within the metropolis of Deauville, in northern France. In an undated interview with Forbes Brasil revealed on Thursday, Salgado mentioned that attending it felt like a stroll via his life.
“How many times in my life have I put my camera to the side and sat down to cry? Sometimes it was too dramatic, and I was alone. That’s the power of the photographer; to be able to be there,” Salgado mentioned. “If a photographer is not there, there’s no image. We need to be there. We expose ourselves a lot. And that is why it is such an immense privilege.”
___ AP journalists Eleonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro and John Leicester in Paris contributed.
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