Sebastian Salgado, Photographer

Sebastião Salgado changed careers from economist to photographer in 1973. After a few years of covering news events he began working on the first of the major photographic projects that would begin to define his vision of the majority world. "Other Americas" depicted those Latin Americans who clung to traditional rural ways; "Famine in the Sahel" documented people attempting to survive in the worst of circumstances; and "Workers" explored the eroded status of the manual worker in the age of computers and high technology. Being a photographer has allowed Sebastião Salgado extended contact with people throughout the world, and it is around this contact that he believes his work revolves. “The picture is not made by the photographer,” he remarked in a somewhat rare public explanation of his approach, “the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph.” In the Sahel, for example, he preferred to take a bus rather than rent a car, because when one arrives by car “it’s a disaster--you are a guy with a car,” a rich guy, and not “with the people.” Or, as he put it more broadly, “You need to be accepted by reality.” The philosophy also jibes with his sense of personal economy--by traveling third class, rolling his own film, working sixteen-hour days making thousands of small proof prints himself, he was able to accomplish his various extended reportages in the Sahel--in Chad, Ethiopia (including the disputed Tigre province), Mali, and the Sudan--for the very minimal sum of $20,000, with printing being the major expense. “You photograph with all your ideology.”