A Different Light: The Photography of Sebastiao Salgado

This is the first full length study of the work of the eminent Brazilian photographer, Sebastiao Salgado. Over the past thirty years or so, Salgado has constructed numerous photo-essays on key aspects of the twentieth century: the impact of modernity on indigenous peoples, famine in Africa, industrialization and its impact on workers, the plight of landless peoples in developing countries, human migrations in every continent and the cost of late modernity in terms of our natural resources and the environment. In the course of his career, Salgado has received every major award in photography. While Salgado's lens spans the globe and his subjects are from all over, nevertheless, his vision is crucially informed by his own background in Brazil. Equally, Salgado's training as an economist frames hi representations, so that his images offer new readings of the history of our times. The topics he covers are large-scale and relevant to all sectors of society: modernity, industrialisation, globalization. While his photographs touch upon these topics, they do so through images that often dwell upon the grandeur of mankind. Inherent to his images is a lasting focus on the greatness of man and nature.This book offers not only an introduction to the photographer and his work, but also an in-depth exploration of the potential of still photography to invite us, as viewers and as readers, to think again about our world. Salgado's images are often moving and dramatic: contained within them is the suggestion of a new line of vision, one that rethinks the world in terms of man's centrality. Implicit in his images is a critique of late capitalism, transnational economics and globalization, large-scale movements of our times that place capital, as opposed to people, at the centre. The book facilitates an understanding of world poverty, social inequalities and a redressing of history. In this sense, this book falls into line with existing work on photography by Susan Sontag and John Berger, both of whom have written seminal texts on the larger relevance of photography.