Mexican workers carry stacks of rough-sawn lumber to market. . . Miners in the mudpits of Brazil's Serra Pelada gold mine pause for a rest. . . A close-up of three rough and gnarled feet symbolizes the harsh Andean environment.
These are images of ordinary people, living anonymous lives. They are also poignant reminders of the realities of poverty and the mission of institutions such as the IDB.
The exhibit "Other America," by renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, on view recently at the IDB's Washington, D.C., headquarters, was presented as part of a series of lectures and cultural events commemorating Brazil's National Day. The photographs show people from Northeast Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico--this Latin America," Salgado says in the accompanying text, "so mysterious and suffering, so heroic and noble."
While they can be viewed as art, the photographs also portray the human side of economic and social development. And in fact, Salgado was trained as an economist, first in São Paulo, then in Paris. After a stint with the International Coffee Organization in London he turned to photography, documenting famine in the Sahel. After that he worked for several photographic agencies, including the elite New York-based Magnum agency. He is now based in Paris, France, where he established his own agency, Amazonas Images.
Salgado picks his own subjects, and his output typically takes the form of book-length collections of photographs. "Other America," his first collection, was followed by a project on the Sahel in Africa, and then an exploration of the theme of work.
Regardless of the subject, Salgado never fails to communicate his intense interest in people. He uses the power of black and white images, with their ability to cut through the distractions of color and movement, to capture the light and shadow essence of his subjects. In lesser hands, achieving this level of formal beauty would risk masking the human dimensions of the subject. But in the case of Salgado, the elegance of the abstract image puts the humanity of his subjects in even sharper relief. Poor people have nobility, but there is nothing noble about poverty.
Salgado works in the time-honored tradition of documentary photography, but he documents people's lives, not news events.
"Some photographers talk about how the technique worked, or the situation in general," remarked an editor at Magnum, as quoted by Americas magazine. "Sebastião gives you little stories of what people said. He is very close to the people he photographs."
Salgado has won numerous awards, including the Eugene Smith Award for Humanitarian Photography (U.S.), Oskar Barnack Prize (Germany), Rey de España Award (Spain), Erna and Victor Hasselblad Award (Sweden), Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris (France), Grand Prix National du Ministere de la Culture et de la Francophonie (France), and Centenary Medal Award and Honorary Fellowship, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.