Where to find nobility amidst darkness? The photographic response of Sebastião Salgado in a Parisian exhibition

"I would like anyone who looks at my photographs to sense the nobility of humankind in every place.” With these words, the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado expressed the central impulse behind his monumental photographic project. Across history, in fact, artists have often turned to their craft as a means of transfiguring personal and collective suffering. The paintings of Frida Kahlo, the haunting visions of Edvard Munch, and the writings of Søren Kierkegaard each emerged from encounters with grief, anxiety, illness, loss, or spiritual uncertainty...

Figure 1 Edvard Munch, Melankoli

The meaning of suffering is the theme often explored by artists and intellectuals, yet another question arises: what place should we assign to human dignity and nobility, if our existence - both individual and collective – can be fractured not only by pain, but also by violence, inequality, and devastation? Sebastião Salgado did not propose an edulcorated image of moral perfection, devoid of complexity or contradictions; rather, he focused on the capacity of humans to retain their sense of purpose and meaning, even amidst the raging storm of adverse circumstances. From this perspective, humankind has the capacity to rise above this landscape of wreckage and ruins, through the exercise of his highest values: solidarity, reason, freedom, responsibility, empathy, compassion, hope... Whether it be individuals or communities holding out under unprecedented pressures, or further afield in landscapes where nature appears in its most primordial forms, Salgado’s aim remained attentive to this fragile continuity between endurance and meaning:

I have always tried to portray people with dignity. In most cases, they are victims of cruelty, of events [...] It is my point of view, but I am not forcing anyone to look at them. I do not want to preach, nor do I want to ease my own conscience by arousing some vague sense of compassion. I took these photographs out of a moral and ethical duty. People will ask me what morality is, what ethics are in such dramatic moments. It is when I am faced with someone who is dying and I need to decide whether to take the photograph or not...

It is right to Salgado that, one year after his death, the city of Paris has chosen to pay tribute through a major retrospective presented in the Hôtel de Ville. Conceived in collaboration with his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the exhibition brings together nearly two hundred photographs drawn from the most significant chapters of Sebastião Salgado’s career.

Figure 2 View of the exhibition © Joséphine Brueder/Ville de Paris

Born in 1944 in Brazil, Sebastião Salgado did not initially approach photography as a vocation: his early education was in economics and statistics, with a particular focus on agricultural development in disadvantaged countries. It was only during a professional assignment in the African continent, where he was conducting research on the production systems of tea and coffee, that he first picked up a camera - one belonging to his wife, Lélia. It was in this occasion that he encountered some of the most devastating consequences of globalised society: poverty, labour exploitation, forced migration, environmental degradation... From that moment onward, his work became increasingly devoted on restoring dignity and visibility to the dispossessed, the marginalised, the misérables within this system: workers, migrants, labourers, and other individuals and communities often excluded from the dominant narratives of progress. His background in economics proved indispensable, enabling him to contextualise these individualities within the broader social phenomena of the twentieth century; yet, beyond a dry analytical understanding, what enriched his perspective was above all a warm and profound empathy, through which he was able to relate to the lived experiences of his subjects with respect and dignity, forging a connection that transcended distance and affirmed their humanity, even in the face of hardship...

Figure 3 View of the exhibition © Joséphine Brueder/Ville de Paris

Salgado’s photographs are purified from colour, guilty of anchoring an image to the superficiality of immediate sensation, and are rendered in black and white, thereby reducing distractions and directing the viewer’s attention to form, gesture, light and human presence. Through this monochromatic choice, which is ethical rather than merely aesthetic, the photograph acquires a sense of eternity and heightened focus, allowing the viewer – for example – to experience more profoundly the gruelling labour of the miners in Dhanbad, India, where dust, heat and exhaustion are unable to erode the workers’ inherent dignity...

Figure 4 Sebastião Salgado, Cole miners, Dhanbad, Bihar, Inde, 1989 Collection MEP, Paris. © Sebastião Salgado

This same nobility animated, thousands of kilometres away from Dhanbad, the workers of Kuwait who, during the Gulf War, sought to contain the massive oil spills triggered by the conflict, taking the form of solidarity in the face of collective tragedy: de hominis dignitate...

Figure 5 Sebastião Salgado Greater Burhan oil field, Kuwait, 1991 Collection MEP, Paris. © Sebastião Salgado

It is precisely empathy that sets many of Salgado’s photographs apart. His works are not based on superficial judgement or first impressions, but are taken only after the photographer could immerse himself deeply and spend extended period of time in close proximity to the communities he portrayed. This is particularly evident in his work on the garimpeiros of Serra Pelada, where gold seekers are overwhelmed in vast open pits of mud and rock...

Figure 6 Sebastião Salgado, Gold mine in Serra Pelada, Pará, Brésil, 1986 Collection MEP, Paris. © Sebastião Salgado

...or when he documented communities in the suburbia of South America, where daily life unfolded under harsh conditions of precarity, but also persistence. “When I take photographs” Salgado observed “I breathe people’s struggles, their rhythms, their anxieties, but also their hopes”.

Figure 7 Sebastião Salgado Suburbs of Guatemala City, Guatemala, 1978 Collection MEP, Paris, 1998 © Sebastião Salgado

From the 2000s onwards, Salgado gradually shifted his focus toward what he described as humanity in its “origins”: ways of life still shaped by a closer and more balanced relation with the natural environment. Alongside this reorientation, he undertook what he called a renewed mission of contemplation: bearing witness to the extraordinary, often overwhelming beauty of the planet itself. The emphasis therefore moved from the fragility of human communities to the fragility of the Earth, capturing environments where nature appears largely silent, pristine and still reigns in all his majesty, far from the destructive fury of modern civilization. His lens travelled to remote regions such as the South Sandwich Islands, where seabirds, and penguins inhabit a stark and frosty primigenial world...

Figure 8 Sebastian Salgado, Chinstrap penguins on an iceberg, South Sandwich Islands, 2009 / MEP Collection, Parism 2018 © Sebastião Salgado

...to the fertile valleys of Papua New Guinea, with its dense, arcane vegetation and shifting light...

Figure 9 Sebastião Salgado Mudman, Paya, Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, 2008 / MEP Collection, 2018 © Sebastião Salgado

...and onward to the silent transcendence of deserts, where vast, mineral landscapes stretch beyond any immediate human measure...

Figure 10 View of the exhibition © Joséphine Brueder/Ville de Paris

In conclusion, the exhibition succeeds in bringing into focus both the majesty of the natural world and of human beings, even amid ongoing devastation. The result is not only a record of suffering and fragility, but also a sustained meditation on endurance -where nature and humanity alike are shown in their full, often fragile, splendour.