Breaking News - Legendary photographer Sebastiao Salgado has died it was announced today. The 81-year-old Brazilian environmentalist, best known for his large-scale black and white photographs of natural world, his images of people and places were seen by millions through his books and exhibitions.
To many fellow photographers, he was perhaps the greatest photographer of his generation. I first remember seeing his work in the 1980s, and was captivated by his extraordinary images of the ant-like armies of workers scaling the open-cast gold mines in Serra Pelada, Brazil.
I had the pleasure of meeting him briefly in 2017 when he came to the UK to talk as a headline speaker at The Photography Show. It was humbling, not just to meet my hero, but to hear the way he talked with such passion about nature, and to see him talk about some of his best-known images.
“When you see these pictures they are much more than just nice pictures, than just a story. It is my life,” he said that day.
“Photography is much more than just taking pictures – it is a way of life. What you feel, what you want to express, is your ideology and your ethics. It’s a language that allows you to travel over the wave of history.” You can see his talk in full here.
He will be sorely missed.
