If you’ve ever looked at a photograph of a place so beautiful you can’t believe it exists, and so remote that you don’t know how someone got there, then it might just be the work of Sebastião Salgado. The Paris-based Brazilian photographer, who died recently at age 81, was known for capturing astounding images of the natural world.
Among his far-reaching travels, Salgado spent seven years in Amazônia. His passion for documenting the damage to that fragile ecosystem and the struggles of the Indians who live there is evidenced in his books Genesis and Amazônia (Taschen), which were edited by his wife and collaborator, Léila Wanick Salgado. And when, in his late 60s, he was at a point in his career when he might reasonably have wanted to wind down, he was instead reaching new heights as an artist. Not that he would have described himself that way. “I’m a photographer,” he told Introspective at the time. “I have this privilege that I can go any place on this planet.”
Regardless of how he wished to be described, he was without question respected and loved. “I feel I have lost a brother,” says Peter Fetterman, Salgado’s longstanding gallerist. “We have been a big part of each other’s lives since Henri Cartier-Bresson introduced us in Paris more than thirty-five years ago and I became his first dealer. The memories are flooding back now. Sebastião was a true force of nature. A one-of-a-kind human being and artist. His legacy is eternal.”
