The Instituto da Terra, a non-governmental organization founded by Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Wanick, announced via a Facebook post:
“With great sadness, we announce the death of Sebastião Salgado, our founder, teacher, and eternal inspiration.”
“Sebastião was much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time. Alongside his life partner, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, he sowed hope where there was devastation. He made the idea that environmental restoration is a profound gesture of love for humanity flourish. His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, the power of transformative action,” the post reads.
At the time of farewell, the Instituto da Terra left its founder with the promise to honor his legacy, “cultivating the land, justice, and beauty that he so strongly believed could be restored. (…) Today and forever.”
The photographer, who lived in Paris, France, leaves behind two sons, Juliano and Rodrigo, and two grandchildren, Flávio and Nara. According to a close friend who told Folha de S. Paulo, he was facing health complications resulting from malaria contracted in the 1990s.
The photographer, who had dual French and Brazilian nationality, was 81. The French Academy of Fine Arts also mourned the loss of “colleague Sebastião Salgado” and shared unique images captured by the photographer.
In 1993, he exhibited his work in Portugal at the Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB) inauguration in Lisbon, where he showed around 250 images.
He was a photographer for the agencies Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum. With his wife, he founded Amazonas Images and the Instituto Terra to reforest the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
Throughout his career, Salgado was recognized for his humanist perspective and in-depth documentation of social, environmental, and humanitarian issues worldwide. His work, including series such as Workers, Exodus, and Genesis, has marked generations and significantly influenced the direction of global photojournalism, inspiring many to use photography as a tool for social change.
Known for his documentary work and black-and-white photography, Sebastião Salgado was awarded the world’s top photography prizes and died on the day that the exhibition “Come Five More—The Foreign View of the Portuguese Revolution (1974-1975)” opened in Almada. The exhibition includes photos of him taken during the revolution, a significant event in Portuguese history that Salgado documented with his unique perspective.
Salgado’s death represents a significant loss for art, journalism, and the environmental cause, to which he dedicated himself wholeheartedly in recent years through the Instituto Terra.
Biography
Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior was born in 1944, in the city of Aimorés, in Minas Gerais. Recognized worldwide, the Minas Gerais native became a master in portraying, in black and white, the human soul and the contrasts of the planet. His lenses immortalized historical moments, ordinary people’s faces, rare, beautiful landscapes, and the impacts of environmental destruction.
A curious fact about Salgado is that he did not start his career as a photographer. Between 1971 and 1973, his first professional choice was to study Economics at the University of Espírito Santo.
In addition, he worked as secretary of the International Coffee Organization in London. During one of his trips to Angola, in Africa, he also coordinated a project on coffee culture. It was then that he began photographing as a hobby, not professionally.
Only when he returned from his trip in 1973, when he was almost 30 years old, did he begin his career as a photographer.
Since then, Sebastião Salgado has traveled to more than 120 countries with his camera. His photographic projects have resulted in numerous publications in the international press and books of significant impact. Exhibitions of his work, which are constantly touring, have been presented in the most diverse corners of the world.
Working exclusively with black-and-white images, Salgado stands out for his sensitivity and deep respect for his subjects. His photography not only reveals the inherent dignity of every human being but also firmly denounces the injustices caused by war, poverty, and social exclusion.
Recognized globally, Salgado is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Among other distinctions, he received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Award in 1982, became an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, and received the Centennial Medal and Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society the following year. Since April 2016, he has been a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Paris, part of the Institut de France.