On his travels through the Amazon, the photographer Sebastião Salgado found a home in the forests and with the people. In his new photo book, he documents her beauty, but also the struggle for survival
Sebastião Salgado was born on February 8, 1944 in Almorés in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. He is considered one of the most important living photographers, although the economist only began photography in 1973. In addition to the commissioned work, he devoted himself to his own long-term, worldwide projects. All in black and white. This is how, for example, his illustrated books “Genesis” and “Africa” were created. He documented the barbaric working conditions that still prevail in different corners of the world. In order to be able to do that, he also cooperated with a Brazilian mining company, for example. He was very criticized for it.
This year he published a volume on the Amazon. More than 400 photos of a landscape that is being destroyed along with its population. Salgado has been visiting the region repeatedly for nearly forty years. He knows from his own experience how threatened it is and he also knows how irreplaceable the tropical rainforests are for maintaining a life-friendly climate on earth. Almost at the very end of the book there is a map that you should not turn over under any circumstances. It can be seen that between 1988 and 2019 about 17.25 percent of the Amazon rainforest was destroyed. One also discovers there that even in the protected areas the forest stock is being drastically reduced.
New photo book by photographer Sebastião Salgado: The beauty of the Amazon and the battle for the rainforest
At the end of the volume there is a short explanation of each recording, which is far too short. The photo we are printing on this page is part of a series of images showing tropical storms. In a general comment on this, the Salgados write: “Only on a few days does a clear piece of blue sky or a compact gray cloud cover appear over the Amazon rainforest. Otherwise the cloud formations offer a constantly changing spectacle. “
The volume is full of these dramatic images of the sky. “A cumulonimbus is by far the most impressive meteorological formation. It rises several thousand meters into the sky, spits out pieces of ice and winds at speeds of up to 200 km / h and at the same time sends lightning, strong winds and heavy rainfall towards the jungle. “As necessary for the health of the earth, Amazonia is itself no wellness area.
It was not for nothing that it was also called the “Green Hell Mato Grosso” more than half a century ago. About the photo itself it only says – almost euphemistically: “In the region the rain falls so thick that this mountain of the Imeri mountain range looks like a volcano. Community of Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira, indigenous sanctuary of the Yanomami, state of Amazonas, 2018. “
Author and work
Sebastião Salgado began his career as a photographer in Paris in 1973 and subsequently worked for the photo agencies Sygma, Gamma and Magnum Photos. In 1994 he and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado founded the Amazonas Images agency (now their studio), which exclusively represents his work. Salgado’s photographic projects have been featured in numerous exhibitions and books.
Salgado says of his new book : “I wholeheartedly wish that this book will not count as an inventory of a lost world in 50 years. Amazônia must continue. “
Which brings us to the other subject of the book: the indigenous peoples. On the few pages that introduce the volume, Salgado mainly talks about them and about the protective measures that are necessary to enable them to survive. You cannot visit them without first making sure that you are not only posing a threat to the forest’s inhabitants, not just yourself, but also none of the viruses and bacteria that accompany us. A quarantine is part of every visit. We now know what damage missionaries and ethnologists can cause not only through their work but simply through the presence of the ecosystem that they themselves are.
Sebastião Salgado documents his found home with the people in the primeval forests of the Amazon basin
There are currently 370,000 indigenous people living in the Amazon region. They speak 150 different languages. Salgado writes about the Zo’é that they rejected private property, that the women had several husbands there and that they were completely unaware of the lie. Skepticism towards such “observations” is certainly appropriate.
In addition to ethnologists, Salgado has also read Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Engels. It helps you to see things, sometimes where they are not. In this context, the story of the Yamurikuma festival among some of the Xingu tribes is very nice. On this occasion, the women take command for a few days and turn the men into pigs. We now look at Odysseus and his story with Circe with completely different eyes. The most famous ethnic group are the Yanomami.
You were at the center of the Yanomami dispute. From the year 2000 it shook the cornerstone of ethnology. What right does a scientist have to question people, to make a book or a film out of them, without those affected sharing the proceeds? Doesn’t he have to explain what he’s doing and ask for their consent? But how can they agree when they have no idea about his science or the role it plays in his society? In such a situation, is it even conceivable to negotiate at eye level?
“Amazônia” by Sebastião Salgado: An impressive insight into the embattled rainforest and its inhabitants
These are questions that Salgado does not address. But from the description of his approach it becomes clear how much the apparently purely academic debate is now influencing the practical handling of the indigenous groups.
We look with fascination at the people photographed by Salgado and recall what he wrote right at the beginning of his new illustrated book: “When I visited an indigenous people in the Amazon region for the first time in the mid-1980s, I was afraid to see people encounter whose lives are so radically different from my own … After just a few hours in their company, I began to relax and feel accepted. The emotions we shared – loving, laughing, crying, happy or angry – were our common language. I felt at home – like in my own tribe, in the tribe of all people …
