Photographer Sebastião Salgado passed away yesterday. It left me with a deep sense of loss.
I still remember the impact after seeing his photography exhibition and the documentary The Salt of the Earth last year. It left such a strong impression that I came to regard him as one of the most humanistic documentary photographers of our time. The film, told from his own perspective, shares his story and the photographs he captured. His gaze is deep and melancholic—perhaps because he had seen the full spectrum of human nature.
Serra Pelada Gold Mine in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil. 1986 ©Sebastião Salgado
Salgado was originally an economist, born in a small town in Brazil. He later fled to France during political unrest and worked for an international organization as a consultant. It was only after his wife gave him a camera that he began photographing their travels and everyday life. Gradually, the camera became a way for him to understand the world. He shot weddings and commercial assignments at first but soon realized that wasn't the path he wanted. He chose documentary photography—a path that demands not just presence, but proximity to suffering, to share the same air, the same temperature.
Korem Camp, Ethiopia, 1984 © Sebastião Salgado
His documentary work wasn’t detached observation. It was empathetic, lived-in. He walked through famine in Africa, the Rwandan genocide, Indigenous villages in South America, and war-torn ruins across Eastern Europe. Under his lens, the conditions of humanity became images that are as heavy as they are enduring.
Refugees from the Croatian population, Serbia. 1995 © Sebastião Salgado
Through photography, I visited the London office of Magnum Photos—the legendary photo agency—a couple of times. It was once the gold standard of photojournalism, a dream destination for many photographers. But in recent years, its aesthetic seems to have shifted. More and more photographers have moved toward the art market and conceptual storytelling. Their work often emphasises ideas, blurring the line between fact and fiction. In that process, the raw purity of documentary photography has gradually faded. Some of the work is still brilliant, but that sense of zeitgeist feels increasingly diluted.
When artificial intelligence first emerged, many predicted that photography would be rendered obsolete. But on a recent visit to the Photo London art fair, I was surprised to find more documentary work than in previous years. On one of the exhibition walls, I spotted Salgado’s work from a distance—it was unmistakably his. Though the images are black and white, you can see the light in them—light shaped by reality, not studio setups. Through those shadows and contrasts, you can see sweat on skin, and you can almost hear the silence screaming.
I still believe that in this age of blurred realities, documentary photography is more necessary than ever. We need a gaze that is not clever, not performative—quiet, unflinching, and deep—to help us see the world with clarity.
Salgado may have been one of the rare few who could stare into the heart of reality without looking away. He had photographed earthly hells, then returned to the land of his childhood and planted two million trees in a barren field—transforming his despair for humanity into a quiet act of repair for the Earth.
He is gone now. But what he left behind is one of the rarest forms of seeing in our time.
If you haven’t seen The Salt of the Earth, I hope you will. Here’s the trailer, featuring Wim Wenders’ voiceover.
