Sebastião Salgado

SEBASTIAO SALGADO (Aimorés, Brazil, 1944).
"A leopard (Panthera pardus) in the Barab River Valley". Damaraland, Namibia, 2005.
Gelatin silver print.
Photographer's credit embossed (in margin).
Signed, dated and annotated in pencil; artist's stamp (on verso).
Provenance: Claudio Poleschi Arte Contemporanea Gallery, San Marino, Italy.
Measurements: 37,4 x 51 cm (image); 50,8 x 61 cm (paper).

This is an image of subjugating beauty and elegance. The powerful majesty of the leopard enhanced by the play of reflections between the water and the night sky introduce us to a sublime nature that is barely hinted at with the minimal elements. It is perhaps one of the least descriptive and most experimental photographs by Sebastiao Salgado, who on this occasion deviates from the documentary rawness of his social photographs to address another of his most pressing concerns: environmental conservation. In several series, Salgado has used his art to draw attention to the challenges facing our planet.

Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian socio-documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled to more than 100 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous publications and books. Traveling exhibitions of his work have been shown around the world. Gallery owner Hal Gould considers Salgado the greatest photographer of the early 21st century. He has received numerous international awards, including the 1998 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts3 and the W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanitarian Photography. Eugene Smith Award for Humanitarian Photography4 in 1982. He came to the field of photography relatively late, having previously trained and worked as an economist. In his career as a photographer he started working for the Paris-based Gamma agency and then joined Magnum Photos in 1979. In 1994 he left Magnum to form his own agency Amazonas Images in Paris to represent his work. Salgado belongs to the tradition of socio-documentary photography: his work highlights the documentation of the work of people in less developed countries or in poverty. In 2001 he was nominated as a special representative of Unicef for his work. He works on his own long-term projects, some of which have been published in books such as "Otras Américas" or "Éxodos". Among his best known photographs are those taken in the gold mines of Serra Pelada in Brazil. He usually photographs in black and white with Leica. In 1989 he received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award. In June 2007, after receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, there was a large anthological exhibition of his work at the PHotoEspaña international festival in Madrid, where he won the Audience Award. While Sebastião Salgado's fame grew in the world of photography, being part of the Magnum agency, his wife Lélia Wanick worked as editor of his works to publish them in books and exhibitions. In the 1990s they both decided to return to Minas Gerais, Brazil, to receive from Sebastião's family a totally devastated, eroded and dry field. In 1998 they formed the Terra Institute and with Lélia as president of the project, they began to reforest the land. With more than 4 million seeds of native species raised by them, they completely reforested the Bulcao Farm with its original flora, giving life to an emblematic and hopeful project for the whole world. Published books: GOLD (2020), Genesis (2013), Exodus (2000), The Gold Mine of Serra Pelada (1999), Terra (1997), Trabalhadores (1996), The Hand of Man (1993), Sahel: l'Homme en Détresse, Prisma Presse and Centre National de la Photographie, for Médecins sans frontières, France (1986), Other Americas (1986), Les Hmongs, Médecins sans frontières, Chêne/Hachette, Paris (1982).