Sebastião Salgado: 46% of nature "still as in the days of Genesis”

At the age of 70 and having worked as a photographer for 40 years, Sebastião Salgado does not consider retiring an option. “It's like riding a bicycle: if you stop pedaling, you fall,” he remarks, while talking about his career. In his new latest project, entitled Genesis, he and his wife Lélia Salgado travel through a number of countries exhibiting a series of photographs on both nature protection and the relationship between man and the mineral, vegetable and animal world.  

Last Tuesday (Sep 2), Salgado was a guest on the show Espaço Público, aired by TV Brasil. He talked about the winding paths he took over the course of his career, going from characters from a wide range of human conflicts to the genesis of the world. It is nice to learn, he says, that 46 percent of the planet “is still as it was in the days of Genesis”. 

The exhibit is currently displayed at the Banco do Brasil Cultural Center (“CCBB”), in Brasília, and features 245 photographs from 32 trips.

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Espaço Público: You've been to over 30 countries to show some of the untouchable spots on our planet. After your travels, do you believe the planet can still be saved?

Sebastião Salgado: I don't have the slightest doubt that it will be saved. We might not be saved, though. We've been pushing our capacity to subsist on the planet to the limit. I think it's a huge responsibility on our part, on the part of our species—and not only in Brazil, but also in the whole world. We've been abusing the planet. There's proof of a real warming, brought about on the planet in large part by human behavior. But there's no doubt the planet will be capable of recreating itself after we're gone.

Espaço Público: You've always worked in on-the-edge situations, in Trabalhadores, in Êxodos... Here you decided to photograph nature in its untouched form. What's the reason for this change in perspective?

Sebastião Salgado: It's good news for the planet that we still have nearly half of it untouched. It doesn't mean man hasn't been there—he has—, but we have approximately 46 percent which is still as it was in the days of Genesis. I chose this direction for a project we started in Vale do Rio Doce, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. In the late 90's, we initiated the recovery of a land thoroughly laid waste to. It was my parents' farm. Vale do Rio Doce had over 50 percent of forest coverage when I was a child. When we received the land from my family there was less than 0.5 percent of it remaining—not only in my parents' land, but in the whole region. It was totally destroyed in a few years. And it's not just any area—it's as large as Portugal. So we made this decision. It was my wife's idea to replant that land; it was not an idea conceived by environmentalists. It's an idea that simply came [to us]. We'll rebuild this forest and the paradise that used to exist here. Today, over 2 million trees have been planted as part of the reforestation.

Espaço Público: You travel to far-off places and we see that you come across human beings entirely different from us. How does it feel to come back to our world after these experiences, which I view as the most far-reaching experience a human being can have?

Sebastião Salgado: […] When you arrive in one of these communities, you get to a community of human beings. You get to your community. I found out during these trips that we're considerably older than we think. We're so close to these communities, and all that matters and all that's essential to us are also important to these communities. After two or three days living [there], it becomes your home too. The relations in the community are the same as ours; solidarity there is the same as ours. Love, and hate, and the relations—it's all the same. The difference... Maybe I could say that the populations I visited... Some of them live 10 thousand years into the past. But in 10 thousand years we haven't changed a bit. So when I return, I'm moving from home to home. There isn't much of a difference. Honestly, there isn't.

Espaço Público: What are the perspectives of a photographer after 30 years of work? You seem to be always excited and busy with projects.

Sebastião Salgado: It's like riding a bicycle: if you stop pedaling, you fall. You have to move on. Years ago, I really believed I could work for a certain number of years and then stop. I'm starting a new project right now, at the age of 70. I think it's really important to establish the goals we have ahead of us in life. Otherwise we leave our future lagging behind.

Espaço Público: Among the main characteristics of your work are the trust and the involvement your photography shows through the people photographed. How do you go about inspiring confidence, and what role does the camera play in your relationship with people?

Sebastião Salgado: The kind of photography I make is a lifestyle. People have often referred to me as an activist photographer, an economist photographer, an anthropologist photographer. I'm none of that. For me, photography is a lifestyle. It's my life. I've photographed with my ideology, my culture—which is Brazilian culture—with my lights all the way from Vale do Rio Doce—they're the ones I take with me, the ones I've been taking with me my entire life. Photographing demands time. The society we live in today is too fast-paced and accelerated. We're always in debt with time. We no longer have the time to do what we need to do, but that's not how photography works. There's a time for photographing. And the time for photographing is the time for understanding, bonding with people, a time for turning the phenomenon you're experiencing into a part of your life. You get to know people, you get their permission to take pictures. There's a time for waiting for things to happen, and a time for receiving the photograph. In reality, you don't make the photograph by yourself—it's the people, the animals, the landscapes. They give you the photograph; you receive it.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira