The Salt of the Earth Wim Wenders’s thoughtful portrait of photographer Sebastião Salgado

I know a bit late to alert you to this but better today than tomorrow. The Wim Wenders documentary about Sebastião Salgado is showing for the last time at the UPP on Cowley Road, Oxford tonight, start time is 6.30pm, here is what the Guardian said about the film .

Wim Wenders co-directed this documentary about Sebastião Salgadowith the photographer’s son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, bringing “an outsider’s view” to a wealth of extant footage and photos. From stunning images of the gold mines of Serra Pelada (“I had travelled to the dawn of time”), to the horrors of famine in the Sahel and genocide in Rwanda (“We humans are a terrible animal… our history is a history of war”), and ultimately to the rebirth of the “Genesis” project, The Salt of the Earth finds Salgado revisiting and confronting his turbulent past.

You can see the trailer

Speaking to Wenders while gazing at – and sometimes through – his back catalogue, Salgado proves an adept and compassionate storyteller, his training as an economist providing sociopolitical insight into the suffering (manmade rather than natural) that threatens to engulf his work. “Everybody should see this image,” he says at one point, although the unspeakable sights captured by his camera prove so unbearable that one is all but forced to look away. Elsewhere, footage of Salgado with Papua’s Yali tribe or the Amazonian Zo’é of Brazil offer a more uplifting portrait of humanity, while the reforestation of the Instituto Terrasuggests that all may not yet be lost.

Salgado is a photographer we feature in some of our courses notably Composition In Photography – Seeing Pictures and Intermediate Photography

 

The Beauty Of Things Born Again: Sebastião Salgado

“I tell a little bit of my life to them, and they tell a little of theirs to me. The picture itself is just the tip of the iceberg.” – Sebastião Salgado
Have you ever encountered someone so fascinating or engaging that you can’t even begin to describe them? That is exactly how I felt when I first came across Sebastião Salgado. Considered to be one of the most influential photographers alive today, Salgado’s images are both powerful and compelling. But, it isn’t just his photography that makes him such an important figure; it is the way he has used his work to change the world.

From Faded+Blurred

Salgado was born on a cattle ranch in Brazil in 1944. Growing up, he and his seven sisters led an idyllic life. Living amongst jaguars, crocodiles, and incredible birds; swimming, riding horses, and eating farm-fresh food, Salgado called it “a complete paradise”. When he was just 15 he had to leave this wonderful place in order to finish high school, not knowing he would not return to live there for another 30 years. He ended up at a university studying economics and marrying the love of his life Lélia Deluiz Wanick. He was able to complete his masters in São Paulo, but because of his left-leaning politics they had to leave Brazil in 1969 and ended up in Paris where both of them finished their studies. It was then that Salgado first picked up a camera. “For the first time, I looked through a lens and photography immediately started to invade my life,” he says. “I finished my PhD in economics, and become an economist, but the camera gave me ten times more pleasure.”

It was shortly after this that Salgado got a job in London for the International Coffee Organization as an economist. This job included a lot of traveling and he began to take his camera with him. The images began to take over his life. He realized this was where he belonged, that the camera was his language. He and his wife moved back to Paris in 1973 so he could begin his life as a photographer……….

Want more? You know you do, go here

LSP Awards 2013

Inspired by photography legend Sebastiao Salgado’s GENESIS Project, the LSP Awards 2013 will be accepting submissions until 8th September 2013 into four categories with Winner and Runner-Up prizes and an Overall Winner prize for the submission of outstanding images into all four categories.

Salgado says of this body of work, “I have named this project GENESIS because my aim is to return to the beginnings of our planet: to the air, water and the fire that gave birth to life, to the animal species that have resisted domestication, to the remote tribes whose ‘primitive’ way of life is still untouched, to the existing examples of the earliest forms of human settlement and organisation. A potential path towards humanity’s rediscovery of itself. So many times I’ve photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet – to see the innocence. And then we can understand what we must preserve.”
Sebastião Salgado via Jori Finkel for the NY Times.

Main Theme:
The Planet Earth

Categories:

               

 Here for more details

Further links about Salgado

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/sebastiao-salgado-genesis-exhibition-at-the-natural-history-museum/

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/sebastiao-salgado-the-unfiltered-lens/

Photography Exhibitions Summer 2013

Daniel Blau announces winners of 5 Under 30 competition

The five winning photographers will exhibit work at the Daniel Blau gallery in Hoxton in July, Daniel Blau has announced the names of the winning photographers in 5 Under 30, its inaugural photography competition for young photographers.The photographers include 27-year-old Marianne Bjørnmyr, 29-year-old Madoka Furuhashi, 26-year-old Andi Schmied, 22-year-old Tereza Cervenova, and 25-year-old Lara Morrell.

For more visit www.danielblau.com

The Photographers Gallery

Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2013 winners are Broomberg & Chanarin for War Primer 2  19 Apr – 30 Jun 2013

Plate 26, George Bush serves a Thanksgiving turkey to US troops stationed in Baghdad in 2003, 2011

CHRIS KILLIP British born Killip has been taking photographs for nearly five decades.What Happened – Great Britain comprises black and white images of working people in the north of England, taken by Killip in the 1970s and 1980s. After spending months immersed in several communities, Killip documented the disintegration of the industrial past with a poetic and highly personal point of view.

18 Apr – 30 Jun 2013

©Chris Killip

Cristina De Middel (b.1975, Spain) is nominated for her publicationThe Afronauts (self-published, 2011). Until June 30th

In her first book, The Afronauts, De Middel engages with myths and truths, reality and fiction. In 1964, after gaining independence, Zambia started a space programme in order to send the first African astronaut to the moon.

©Cristina de Middel

Sebastião Salgado Genesis

Natural History Museum

11 April – 8 September 2013
Waterhouse Gallery

Sebastião Salgado’s Genesis is the culmination of 8 years work exploring 32 countries. It is Salgado’s 3rd long-term photographic exploration of global issues, following his previously acclaimed collections, Workers and Migrations.

About 216 of Sebastião Salgado’s black-and-white documentary photographs are on show in Genesis. They capture some of the furthest and wildest corners of our world, portraying indigenous communities that continue to live in accordance with their ancestral traditions, and showing rare insights into their lands.

During the 8 years in which Salgado travelled around the world to produce this collection of images, he often stayed with the people he photographed.

Salgado reflects: ‘Many of us live in cities, cut off completely from the planet. My wish was to experience living with people with real links to nature… For me to go back to nature was a huge pleasure. I wished to present the planet in my language, photography. And so came Genesis.’

The exhibition’s design follows the 5 themes in Genesis: Sanctuaries, Planet South, Africa, Northern Spaces, and Amazonia and Pantanal.

Sebastião and Lelia Salgado © Richard Beliel

Many of the places represented in Salgado’s images are important research areas particularly for studying the variety of species biodiversity.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

This is now on tour and can be found at various locations

Basingstoke
18 May 2013 to 27 July 2013
Willis Museum
Market Place, Basingstoke, RG21 7QD
0845 603 5635

Bedford
22 June 2013 to 15 September 2013
The Higgens Art Gallery and Museum
Castle Lane, Bedford, MK40 3XD
01234 718618

 

EXPOSURES

Julia Martinez: Nude Photography

13th – 29th  June 2013

The photographer, The artist, formerly a photographic model, moves behind the lens

Art Jericho, 6 King Street, Oxford OX2 6DF, Opening hours vary, but are often Wed-Sat 11am – 5pm (or by appointment) and Sun 1-5pm.

ROCK PORTRAITS 90/94 Dean Ryan

4th July – 3rd August 2013

Live music photography at the Jericho Tavern

A first viewing of photographs of The Verve, Pulp and many more at the celebrated Oxford venue.

Art Jericho, 6 King Street, Oxford OX2 6DF, Opening hours vary, but are often Wed-Sat 11am – 5pm (or by appointment) and Sun 1-5pm.

 

 

Sebastião Salgado: Genesis Exhibition at The Natural History Museum

The world premiere of Sebastião Salgado: Genesis unveils extraordinary images of landscapes, wildlife and remote communities by this world-renowned photographer. These pictures depict the majesty of nature and the balance of human relationships with our fragile planet.

Salgado’s Genesis is the culmination of 8 years work exploring 32 countries. It is Salgado’s 3rd long-term examination of global issues, following his previous acclaimed collections Workers and Migrations.

The photographs in this exhibition capture some of the furthest corners of our world. They portray indigenous communities that continue to live in accordance with their ancestral traditions and cultures, and show rare insights into their lands and lives.

Sebastião Salgado has been awarded many major photographic prizes in recognition of his accomplishments, most recently receiving the Gold Medal Award for Photography from the National Arts Club in New York.

 

Image: © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas Images/nbpictures

Sebastião Salgado: Genesis
11 April – 8 September 2013
Waterhouse Gallery

Ticket prices* £10 adults, £5 child and concession, £27 family
Free for Members, Patrons and children under 4

Full details here

 

 

Sebastiao Salgado: The Unfiltered Lens

Fascinating interview by Bryan Appleyard with Sabastiao Salagado on the release of his new  book on landscapes and the environment called “Geneis”

In the rainforest everything is backlit. The light streams towards you, silhouetting the trees. Also the Brazilian sun burns, so children are given broad-brimmed hats. They grow up always looking from shadow into light.

“I realised recently that most of my photographs are shot against the light,” says Sebastião Salgado, “and that is why. I was raised in the shadows. The sun injured my nose and it was necessary to have a hat, so everything came to me from light into shadow.”

Salgado’s pictures are among the most influential of our time. In particular, his staggering shots of the Serra Pelada goldmine in Brazil, in which thousands of workers both assault the earth and become one with it, have defined, more vividly than any written account, the effect of industrialisation on the Third World. He has also photographed famines, migrations, the entire global effort of human survival beneath the crushing burden of modernity.

Read all of this essential article here

This is the beautiful book published by Taschen, click on the cover to get the special Amazon deal and pay only £38.24

Images: © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas Images/nbpictures