Favourite Photogs: Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado is another one of those names that popped up quite a bit while I was at Loyalist. Another photographer big on black and white,  his photos all have an intensity I think would be almost too much in colour. He originally started out as an economist and while working for the International Coffee Organization, he would often travel to Africa, which was where he first started seriously taking photos. Then in 1973 he moved from his native Brazil to Paris, France, where he started out doing news before eventually moving on to his current documentary style photography. 

 

  

He worked with photo agencies such as Sygma, Gamma and Magnum Photos until he and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, created Amazonas Images for his images. To date, he’s had several books of his photographs published, several of them large collections of self assigned projects. His most recent work, Genesis, was published in 2013 and is a culmination of work from between 2004 and 2011. The book is a look at untouched faces of nature and humanity and Salgado had wanted to use this body of work as a way for humanity to rediscover itself in nature.

His commitment to nature doesn’t just begin and end with Genesis, however. Since the 1990’s Salgado and his wife have worked on restoring a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil and in 1998 they succeeded in turning the area into a nature reserve and called it Instituto Terra. The institute is dedicated to reforestation, conservation and environmental education.

While I do really love me some bright, colourful photography, there is something very appealing about Salgado’s intense black and white photographs. I think part of it is because I know I couldn’t get away with such extremes and so I appreciate it in his work but also because he uses it so well. It brings your eye to detail and also gives his photographs an almost dreamlike quality that isn’t always available with colour.

Things I’m Loving:

+ I watched Disney’s Frozen this weekend – (It was so adorable!)
+ DIY Business Cards – (For any of you who were thinking of getting new ones.)
+ This book – (Looks like it would be a really interesting read.)
+ Every outfit in this interview – (Is screaming, “WEAR ME!” to me.)