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| (c) UNICEF / Nicole Toutounji |
A tribute I wrote to the life and work of Sebastião Salgado has just been published in PassBlue. I am also including Nicole Toutounji's portrait of Salgado.
Ellen Tolmie
Click here for the article
Summary
The article is an affectionate tribute to Sebastião Salgado—Brazilian-French photojournalist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador—highlighting his journey from economist to globally acclaimed black-and-white photographer. Salgado, renowned for his distinctively luminous black‑and‑white images…died May 23 at age 81.
Appointed by UNICEF in 2001 (the only photographer to receive that honor), Salgado used his lens to document human suffering and resilience: from Latin American miners and African drought victims to Rwandan genocide survivors and polio vaccination campaigns.
His seminal photo essays include Workers (1993), Migrations (2000), and The Children, underscoring his long-term engagement with compelling humanitarian themes.
The tribute also addresses controversies, including criticism over the ethics of aestheticizing suffering, famously labeled “beautiful suffering” by some art-world observers. Ultimately, the piece honours Salgado’s profound contributions to visual storytelling and humanitarian advocacy, while acknowledging that his art both inspired and provoked important debates.
Quotes
Click here for the article
Summary
The article is an affectionate tribute to Sebastião Salgado—Brazilian-French photojournalist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador—highlighting his journey from economist to globally acclaimed black-and-white photographer. Salgado, renowned for his distinctively luminous black‑and‑white images…died May 23 at age 81.
Appointed by UNICEF in 2001 (the only photographer to receive that honor), Salgado used his lens to document human suffering and resilience: from Latin American miners and African drought victims to Rwandan genocide survivors and polio vaccination campaigns.
His seminal photo essays include Workers (1993), Migrations (2000), and The Children, underscoring his long-term engagement with compelling humanitarian themes.
The tribute also addresses controversies, including criticism over the ethics of aestheticizing suffering, famously labeled “beautiful suffering” by some art-world observers. Ultimately, the piece honours Salgado’s profound contributions to visual storytelling and humanitarian advocacy, while acknowledging that his art both inspired and provoked important debates.
Quotes
"Salgado's ... cultural and professional experience brought an intimate familiarity to Unicef’s humanitarian and development mandate: a childhood in rural Brazil, a refugee from that country’s military dictatorship in 1969 and a life’s work witnessing the fates of the dispossessed."
Thank you, dear Ellen, for this beautiful tribute to Sebastião Salgado. You bring out some little-known vignettes of Salgado's life, which I found very touching and interesting.
ReplyDeleteMay his noble soul rest in eternal peace.
I do not understand the criticism to his photographs. Great photographer, great person too. Long live his photographs and legacy. Until not so long ago, when he finally shifted to digital photography, he travelled with a medium format analog camera and tons of very special film rolls that made his travels a complicated logistic adventure. Thank you for the article
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