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T he Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has documented more than 120 countries, but there is one region that has occupied the 78-year-old social-documentarian solely for the last decade: the Amazon rainforest — or Amazônia, as it’s called in Brazilian Portuguese.
On 28 September 2022, the inaugural Sotheby’s Impact Gala will support the work of Instituto Terra, the nonprofit environmental organization co-founded by Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado. Co-chaired by photographer Annie Leibovitz, the gala will raise crucial funds to ensure the organization can continue its work planting millions of trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and educating farmers, public officials and local communities about the importance of protecting this delicate ecosystem.
Complementing the gala are a series of live and online auctioned experiences and art, including works by Edward Burtynsky, Vik Muniz and David Hockney. Magnum Opus, a multiweek selling exhibition, presents fifty seminal photographs by Salgado, offered here for the first time as sumptuous large platinum prints. One hundred percent of the proceeds will benefit Instituto Terra.
Salgado has also partnered with Sotheby’s on his debut foray into NFTs with Tree of Life — a unique work combining video, audio, and photography — and Amazon̂ia, a collection of five thousand works comprising the most ambitious collection of NFTs by a living photographer.
In advance of these events, I spoke with Salgado about his extensive work in the Amazon. Here, he shares his insights on the rainforest and its communities, as well as what we can do to help.
Emily Bierman
How long have you been working in the Amazon?
Sebastião Salgado
The first pictures I made in Amazônia were in 1983, and I’ve been back many times. Amazônia is so huge that when you work in one part, you cannot go to another. I’ve realized about 48 different trips.
Emily Bierman
In some of your trips, you go for weeks at a time, disappearing and throwing yourself into your subject. What has been perhaps the most drastic change that you’ve witnessed over the years?
Sebastião Salgado
When I first worked in the forest in the eighties, Amazônia was still about 90 percent there. By 2013, we had lost 16 to 17 percent. It was visual; it was easy to see. The most striking sites of destruction are on the periphery; the heart of the Amazon is still there, but we are reaching from the outside. Wherever we build roads into the forest, there is deforestation.
I decided I would make the bulk of my work there and participate in the presentation of Amazônia and its Indigenous communities to see if it was possible to protect this space. Since the beginning of 2013, I have worked exclusively in Amazônia.
“Photography is the memory of our society. Its most important contribution is to history.”
Emily Bierman
Are there any areas you’ve visited that have been lost or that only exist in your photographs? Or are your photographs, which are often a rallying cry towards conservation of the natural beauty of the landscape, essentially, a system of documentation that’s only grown since then?
Sebastião Salgado
When you photograph a place like this, you photograph many different aspects. I have pictures of destruction and fires and roads, but in the bulk of my work, I try to present the pristine Amazônia, the power of Amazônia, because that’s the one that we must motivate people to protect. That Amazônia still represents 82 percent of the rainforest, and I try to present the truest photographs of the Indigenous communities — their divinity, their way of life integrated with this forest. That way we can understand the forest and the ecosystem we need to preserve.
Emily Bierman
How does photography help with the efforts towards conservation? Is that about awareness? Activism? Fundraising? All of the above?
Sebastião Salgado
Photography is the memory of our society. Its most important contribution is to history. The pictures made by Edward Curtis of the American Indian communities at the beginning of the century are some of the only images we have from this time. The portraits that I did of Indigenous communities in Amazônia represent the precise moment in which I work. I do not make them because I’m an activist or to raise funds for the Amazon. I am a documentary photographer, concerned with history. I made them because I want to express this moment.
Of course, after that they become an engine for environmental organizations. The shows we organized in São Paulo had ten days of discussion with Indigenous leadership. We created a huge movement. This November in Rio de Janeiro, we’re organizing a big meeting of Indigenous leadership for the show that is there now.
Emily Bierman
Tell me about some of your trips to the Amazon. How difficult is it to travel? How do you prepare and what equipment do you bring?
Sebastião Salgado
Normally we go with a small team with as many as 15 people. We have four or five boats, each with a driver specialized in navigating the small reefs. It’s very difficult to drive a boat there. See the trees in the water in the photograph of the Suruwahá Indigenous Territory? For the Indigenous, it is easy to navigate because their boats are made with bark. One person can carry the boat on his back, cross the trees and off he goes. But our boats are quite heavy and full of food, so we must cut through. Sometimes it’s impossible, and sometimes we must make an encampment and rest. But for me, this picture represents paradise. The water is so clean that you can put your mouth there and drink.
When Indigenous people go hunting or fishing, we go with them, but we must set our own camp and eat our own food. The National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) doesn’t allow us to eat their food and doesn’t allow us to give our food to them. We must be completely equipped. We bring two men called “Captains of the Forest” in Brazil; they know how to fish, how to hunt, how to climb trees and how to set encampments. We also bring a cook, a translator and my assistant. And then we fill the boats with everything else we need, including two solar panels and a 12-volt car battery.
I travel with four cameras because I don’t like to change lenses. I don’t bring computers because there is a lot of rain, but I have two digital cards inside each camera. When we fly back, I give one set of cards to my assistant so that if my plane crashes we don’t lose the material. I even bring a studio backdrop to Amazônia — a real studio six meters wide by nine meters long. I create an entire system of work, and all these systems work together to make these pictures.
“I’m trying to present the pristine Amazônia, the power of Amazônia, because it’s the one that we must motivate people to protect.”
Emily Bierman
Your landscapes feels as if you have captured the universe opening up for you at the absolute best and most important moments. The photograph from Serra do Divisor National Park — it’s almost impossible to understand how you were able to capture that.
Sebastião Salgado
Well, I was in a helicopter with the environmental police, who were surveying the national park to look for deforestation. The rain looks like an atomic explosion. The cloud is called a cumulonimbus, and it can go 9 or 10 kilometers high. Inside there are amazing winds and lightning, and it can project stones of ice more than 200 kilometers into the distance. The pilots must know where to fly and at what altitude. Over the many trips we’ve made, we’ve only had one opportunity to see what was in front of us.
Emily Bierman
There are several portraits in “Magnum Opus” that are great examples of portraits made in the studio you described. Other portraits are made out in the open. How do you establish such a level of trust with your subjects to be able to capture those?
Sebastião Salgado
In 2014 we climbed the highest mountain in Brazil, Pico da Neblina. There were 22 Indigenous people climbing the mountain, including several shaman. It was very humid there; I slipped and injured the tendons of my shoulder. This Yanomami shaman is one of the most important shamans. He’s praying to a god who controls all the wind, all this tempest, all the lighting in Amazônia. He’s appealing to the god to allow us to continue our ascension. The photograph is an extension of a trip that took two weeks, beginning from the point where the boats left us at the river until we reached the mountain’s peak.
Emily Bierman
“Magnum Opus” is accompanied by a musical score. How does the inclusion of music within your exhibitions enhance the experience?
Sebastião Salgado
The music was composed by François-Bernard Mâche, my colleague from Académie des Beaux-Arts and one of the biggest composers in France. He took his inspiration from the water. It’s so relaxing to see the pictures and have this symphony — you feel completely integrated with nature. The music was composed for a show in Paris called “Acqua Mata” that only has pictures of water, but we chose to include it at Sotheby’s because this show is also about the environment.
Emily Bierman
What made you decide to explore the platinum printing process, given that you’re well known for deeply saturated, beautifully contrasted gelatin-silver prints? The experience of viewing a platinum print is very different. In my opinion, it is the epitome of the medium.
Sebastião Salgado
Platinum is one of the most sophisticated and beautiful bases for photography. My photographs have a lot of contrast, and platinum is the only way to get all the details within the shadows. Besides, platinum is very expensive, and it isn’t possible for us to raise too much money for our institution [laughter].
Emily Bierman
For people who are coming to this project new and learning about Instituto Terra for the first time, what would you like them to know? How do you hope to inspire them going forward?
Sebastião Salgado
I hope we teach people that we can rebuild the planet. That is what we’re doing: trying to rebuild the planet. We are in a very dramatic moment in the history of our planet and of the human species. We are heating fast and we are contributing huge amounts of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. If we plant enough trees, we can recapture all of those carbon emissions. Trees bring back biodiversity, capture carbon and protect the water; planting them is the only way to save our planet. We’ve created enormous deserts around the world, and it’s now necessary for us to recuperate those ecosystems. It depends on us. Instituto Terra began with a desert, and today we have a forest.
