EXHIBITIONS: Advertising misery: an interview with Sebastiao Salgado

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sophie Arie

PARIS, Apr 25 2000 (IPS) - Benetton’s Oliviero Toscani uses shocking human images to sell clothes. Sebastiao Salgado photographs human misery to advertise human misery.

“I want as many people as possible to see my photos so they cannot turn away and ignore what’s happening to the other half of the world, “Salgado told IPS at early April opening of a new exhibition called Exodus. The exhibition will run at the European Photography Centre here in Paris until September.

The famous Brazilian photojournalist has spent the last seven years travelling to every hell-hole in the world, to put together a portfolio of the world’s millions of uprooted people.

Exodus is a collection of 300 images of people without homes, torn from their normal lives by war, famine, flood, political oppression or ecological disaster, or simply looking for a better life. Each photo tells a different personal story of rupture, but in a striking way, they are all the same.

“There are thousands of people, all over the world, all on the move – and what ever country they are in, whatever war they are fleeing or gold they are seeking they are all the same,” Salgado says.

“This is a subject that’s crying out for debate. I know it by heart. I’ve seen it all my life,” he told me.

The bald, energetic 56 year-old, who took political exile in France 26 years ago, is best known for his photo reports of Brazilian gold-mines and landless peasants, and for his images of Kuwaiti oil rigs blazing months after the Gulf War.

He does not shy from the accusation of recreating clichés of human suffering – he actually says that’s his aim:

“The reporter is a producer of icons and stereotypes. If the images all fit the same mould, they are suited to world consumption. The icons, the cliches, have to be recognisable and meaningful for as many people as possible.”

“I hope people won’t get tired of seeing these images. People don’t get tired of consuming, so hopefully they will keep looking at my pictures, and react,” he says.

The globe-trotting photographer is so good at his job he is often accused of turning people’s distress into works of art. And it is true – the photos are all well-framed, lit and posed. They are not action pictures, but still, thought provoking portraits which gaze out.

“I understand why people criticise me for exploiting people’s misery for aesthetic reasons. But making a beautiful image of pain doesn’t trouble me. Because it says so much more than a bad photo.”

Salgado, who trained as an economist before he discovered his camera, makes a living through his small but unique photo agency, Amazonas Images, which he set up with his wife Leila Wanick Salgado in 1994 after storming out of the international agency Magnum in 1992.

His reputation has earned him retainer contracts with some of the world’s biggest publications, New York Times, Paris Match, El Pais.

The six-man agency Amazonas, based in an airy loft along the Canal Saint Martin in Paris, keeps money rolling in with exhibitions – the last, called the Human Hand, appeared in 67 different places in 1993 – and books of the celebrity photographer’s work.

But Salgado says the aim is not money or fame, it is to get people talking.

“I am tired of hearing aesthetic discussions about my photos. I just want people to talk seriously about the story these photos tell. If we can get people talking, eventually there will be a trickle down effect that will help the world’s uprooted people.”

Salgado is determined to use his photos to make the comfortable world look at its uncomfortable side. He has visited 47 countries in four continents to gather images of the exodus.

But with television and the Internet, there is no longer an excuse, Salgado says in the preface to a book of Exodus photos, for not knowing about the horrors taking place on the other side of the world or in your own backyard.

And yet, even when people know there are thousands fleeing Kosovo, millions clinging to trees to escape flood waters in Mozambique, not enough is done to help. Northern aid agencies exist, in a large part, to do the public relations work for the South. And that’s where Salgado has found his niche: he has made himself a kind of PR man for the humanitarian cause.

His photos, including the well-known ‘before and after’ images of starving Leila, helped boost a food aid campaign in the 1990s by the French agency Action Against Hunger, and continue to bring to life Freres des Hommes’ campaign for landless peasants in Brazil.

So far there are 16 Exodus exhibitions booked in cities around the world, but scores more will be cobbled together by non- governmental organisations who receive “expo kits” of Salgado’s photos to ‘advertise’ their trade – humanitarian aid.