Sebastiao Selgado,
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Film: "Salt of the Earth," Directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. "Salt of the Earth" showcases the work of Sebastiao Salgado, a social photographer and former economist from Brazil. Narrated by Wenders, the film traces Salgado's development as a photographer and reflects on his projects in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and all over South America. Though he traveled widely, Salgado explored each location long-term and in-depth, creating evocative and vivid photo essays of the world's most harrowing places and dispossessed people. His images are stunning. The photographs are gorgeous compositions of light
and dark, but many are as horrifying as they are beautifully photographed. Yet
the photos are respectful, not exploitative, and they seem to capture moments
that exemplify some truth of what it is like to live in the place and time he is
photographing.
His photos of people suffering war and famine are almost too much to bear.
In fact, Salgado's experience in Rwanda nearly crushed his spirit and left him
not wanting to continue as a photojournalist. But over time, with the help of
his wife, Lelia, he found a new direction, focusing on landscapes, wildlife, and
on human communities that he felt represented the majesty, beauty, and "purity"
of the earth. As always, the photographs from this period are breathtaking, but
the way Salgado and Wenders seem to categorize the people of the Yamal Peninsula
in Siberia and the Zo'e community in the Brazilian Amazon with other parts of
non-human nature made me uncomfortable. I can't say Salgado was disrespectful or
even directly condescending to his human subjects, but I got the sense that he
viewed them as somehow untouched by time and outside forces, not recognizing how
these societies must have developed through the years.
This dynamic came into relief when a member of the Zo'e community asked
Salgado to give him his knife as a souvenir. Salgado was inclined to do so, but
felt that it would would threaten the purity of Zo'e community traditions to
leave such an object behind. This interaction left me uncomfortable and
questioning what would be the "right" way to handle such a situation. Wasn't
Salgado being a little precious with his Zo'e acquaintance and with the
community in general? Was it really his place to judge what would and would not
have a negative impact on this society that was not his own? I'm not entirely
sure what the answer is, but the moment made me bristle and wish for more
exploration from the filmmakers.
The movie ends on the land on which Salgado grew up. During his childhood
it was lush—originally a subtropical rain forest—but over the years, as a
cattle ranch and as mining territory, it became dessicated and degraded. In the
late 1990's, Salgado and Lelia began replanting the rain forest and eventually
created the Instituo Terra, which serves as a model for ecosystem restoration.
Although the Instituto does not begin to remediate or address the horrors
Salgado has documented throughout his career, it does provide a positive space
to foster some form of healing and growth.
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