Sebastião Salgado, Is Dead at 81
Sebastião Salgado, the renowned Brazilian photographer known for his powerful black-and-white images depicting both the beauty and suffering of the world, died on Friday in Paris at age 81. His death was announced by Instituto Terra, the environmental nonprofit he co-founded with his wife in Brazil.
According to his family, Salgado had developed leukemia after contracting a rare form of malaria during a photography assignment in Indonesia in 2010. They described his lifelong mission as a fight for a more just, humane, and ecological world.
Over his decades-long career, Salgado earned global acclaim for documenting the lives of vulnerable people and the natural world. He traveled to more than 120 countries, capturing the harsh realities faced by workers, migrants, and Indigenous communities, particularly in the Amazon rainforest.
One of his most iconic photo essays came in 1986, when he documented gold miners laboring in brutal conditions in Pará, Brazil. The harrowing yet visually arresting images helped establish him as one of the premier photojournalists of his time.
In the 1980s, Salgado also gained recognition for his haunting images of Ethiopia’s famine, a project that earned him numerous awards and elevated him to international prominence. His 1991 assignment in Kuwait, capturing the oil-well fires after the Gulf War, was hailed as one of the best photo essays ever published by The New York Times Magazine.
Salgado’s eye for pivotal moments extended beyond humanitarian crises. He photographed the immediate aftermath of the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, including images of gunman John Hinckley Jr. being subdued.
Though admired for his artistic and humanistic approach, Salgado faced some criticism for aestheticizing suffering. He rejected this view, stating that beauty and dignity exist everywhere. In a 2024 interview, he remarked, “Why should the poor world be uglier than the rich world?”
Throughout his life, Salgado received many prestigious honors, including two Leica Oskar Barnack Awards and several World Press Photo awards. He was inducted as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the French Academy of Fine Arts.
Born on February 8, 1944, in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Salgado was the only son among eight children in a cattle-ranching family. He met his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick, while studying economics. Political unrest forced the couple to emigrate to France in the late 1960s.
Initially trained as an economist, Salgado discovered photography while working for the World Bank in Africa. He launched his photography career in 1973 and later joined the prestigious Magnum Photos agency. In 1994, he and his wife founded their own agency to pursue more personal projects.
One of his most ambitious projects was his documentation of the Amazon. He spent years photographing its rivers, forests, wildlife, and people, showing both natural splendor and the consequences of deforestation and human exploitation.
In the late 1990s, he and his wife established Instituto Terra to restore the Atlantic Forest in his home region. The reforestation initiative became a symbol of hope, echoing the themes of renewal and resilience found throughout Salgado’s work. His legacy, marked by empathy and visual storytelling, continues to influence the world of photography.
