Sebastião Salgado: The Silent Drama of Photography

Sebastião Salgado: The Silent Drama of Photography

Economics PhD Sebastião Salgado only took up photography in his 30s, but the discipline quickly became a life changing obsession. Sebastião Salgado years-long projects beautifully capture the human side of a global story that all too often involves death, destruction, decay, or some of that other nasty stuff from the dark side of the force. Here, he tells a deeply personal story of the craft that nearly killed him, and shows breathtaking images from his latest work, Genesis, which documents the world’s forgotten people and places. If you haven’t seen the Genesis show and get the chance, you need to. It is as a collection nothing short of stunning. An eight year masterpiece from a photographic master of the medium.

In this TED talk, Salgado discusses his life’s work. He replays for us an overview of his life story; how his work opened his eyes to everything bad in the world that almost killed him in the process, and how photography blossomed back into his life as a way to tell the stories of the pristine beauty in the world that is worth mankind preserving.

Salgado has spent years putting together amazing black-and-white exhibitions that have been telling stories of the human conditions on a world wide basis; human stories on a global scale. He came to photography as his medium of expression after his PhD in Economics gave way to the discipline of the camera and light. With Salgado, his photography soon became the obsession that never ends. There are always more stories of human situations to be told, the telling of each stealing another little chip off your soul. And then there are the stories of beauty around the world, rapidly disappearing, yet well worth preserving. These are the stories that refresh you. These are the stories that add strength and energy to active souls. These are the only stories today that Sebastião Salgado tells.