Critical Review

Ethical Representation

in the work of Sebastiao Salgado

Sebastiao Salgado’s series Workers (1993) is a global archaeological exploration on the theme of manual labor and the human exploitation at the core of modern industrial civilisation. His traditional documentary approach, being a style of photography that provides straight forward and accurate representation of people, places and events (Tate, 2023) combined with the contemporary devices of visual language and their aesthetic will be discussed in this essay, along with consideration of his ethical stance to image making. 

His activism and commitment to humanitarian issues are thought to be formed by his idyllic childhood on a farm in Brazil. Training as an Economist trying to aid development in the third world, before becoming a photographer and using the medium to bring awareness to social economic struggles he encountered. (ICP, 2023).

His ‘patience and curiosity’ and sheer interest in his subjects when approaching photographic projects, a term coined by the former London Director of Magnum Photos Neil Burgess when interviewed by the British Journal of Photography (3 Sept 2019) is he argues, at odds with modern society and it’s demand for instant gratification. Burgess has gone on record further and suggested a return to such ethical approaches to ensure serious subject matters are once again authentically represented (Burgess, 2010)

Salgado’s conscious and deliberate tactic of a long term approach with his choice of subject has been used throughout his career. Evidenced through his closeness to the action in all his projects; Migrations (2000), Genesis (2012) Kuwait (2016), Gold (2019) and Amazonia (2021). The titles of his work speak volumes about his focus and intentions, of heritage and globalised capital extraction and the importance of getting them on film to speak to a wider audience. He suggests as the photographer he alone has little power to illicit change, this ultimately rests with other agents such as the media, who’s influence is greater. Evidenced by the powerful response to his images of Cambodian amputees appearing in The Independent in 1990 which generated donations greater than the original appeal fund (NYPD, 2015). This is in contrast to the work of Marcus Bleadsale (1968) who’s prime audience is to target directly and indirectly those responsible for policy making (Issu, 2005) 

All of Salgado’s images are in black and white signalling a traditional humanist representation. This movement, largely associated with French photographers (Doisneau (1912-1944), Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), Ronis (1910-2009), Boubat (1923-1999), Izis (1911-1980), Weiss (1924-1921) is also referred to as poetic realism or human interest. The premise of which Cartier-Bresson, one of the founding members of the co-operative agency Magnum Photos, who’s spearheading of this movement and who Salgado worked with in Paris until 1994, stated as “The object of the photograph is Man, Man and his short, fragile threatened life” (Superprof, 2018).

It is Salgado’s signature dream-like bronze tones and penchant for chiaroscuro lighting, both  deliberate and consistent throughout which lend a renaissance aspect to his work. “The influence of strong colours inside a photo for me is disturbing. Of course black and white is an abstraction, but it’s one that allows you to concentrate only on your interest point—the personality, the movements of the person, not the shirt they are wearing.” (Art & Antiques, 2020). 

His choice to eschew colour is combined with incorporating a variety of codes and conventions, notably the use of direct collaborative address and use of captions to anchor place and time. Through which Salgado attempts to show a collective and complacent Western viewer the invisible labor and human toll contained within the products consumed in global capitalist countries. As we witness their struggle and by extension their resilience through choice of form and medium, a compelling and aesthetic beauty is used to convey his message. This is how Salgado has suggested he attempts to bestow dignity to those in the frame.

This same aesthetic has received much criticism “beautifying human tragedy results in pictures that ultimately reinforce our passivity towards the experience they reveal” (NYT, 2018). Along with suggestions that his ‘cinematic’ work ‘encourages hopelessness…..’ (Sontag: 2003: 78-80). Salgado has insisted his work is not exploitative, merely a channel to focus greater debate on social issues. Yet with the belief that the power ultimately always rests with the photographer, there remains conflict that on some level all photography exploits those in the frame regardless of how ethical one considers their practice. 

Deceptively complex in its approach, the image of 'The Gold Mine, Brazil’ is one of 28 photographs taken at the Serra Pelada in north west Brazil in 1986. Portrait in orientation emphasising the high vantage point, suggesting the viewers perspective looking down literally and figuratively over the mine and workers. 

The top of the frame shows misty conditions with people carrying sacks off into the distance, the bottom of the frame shows muddy conditions with people queueing to make the climb, suggesting the cycle of work continues beyond the frame. As does the naked exploitation and oppression of the workers through the subtle yet symbolic multiple meanings derived from the denotative and connotative references.

Salgado’s first impression on visiting the mine was described as “Every hair on my body stood on edge. The Pyramids, the history of mankind unfolded. I had traveled to the dawn of time”

(The Incubator, 2016). Despite his attempts to stimulate awareness within the viewer of strenuous and deadly dangerous conditions the workers were exposed to, possibly even sympathy, the opposite could be argued with the counter argument of their de-individualisation. By focusing on the mass over the individual and reducing the worker to usage and without value by the scale of the operation. A method at odds with other documentary practitioners like Lewis Hine (1874-1940) and Dorothy Lange (1895-1965) who make the human condition central to their work (Clarke, G: 147) presenting individuals instead of a wider scene. 

Beyond the reportage capturing those in the midst of such danger or sensitive moments of reflection, is the realisation it took Salgado many years to gain access from Brazil’s military authorities to photograph the mine and its workers. He piggy backed this trip on to a paid assignment that had got him into South America, choosing to photograph this story in his own time, spending his own money over the course of 38 days. He clearly felt passionate enough about what he saw to stay and document it for wider circulation. “With documentary photography the difference is that the photographer must have a big concern. You must have a big ideological affinity with the subject you will be shooting, because if you don’t, you can not remain sincere and empathetic for long. You must strongly identify with the subject”. Salgado (2000)

His ethical approach of living and working alongside the mass of humanity that had flooded to this site digging for gold, 278 miles below the mouth of the Amazon River, shows how he integrated into the environment and gained the workers trust to take such intimate footage on his 35mm Leica camera. It is through this lived experience which assumes the victim workers depicted have given their informed consent. His personal investment and approach contrasts with other photographers who had documented the mine, such as Magnum Brazil correspondent Miquel Rio Branco who shot in colour and spent only a day or so on site. It was the time he spent at Serra Pelada which allowed Salgado to get beyond the superficial, connect us with the scale of the labour and its degradation by photographing the mine in a way it hadn’t been documented before. Such was the effect upon publication it lead to a resurgence of black and white photography when colour was in ascendancy. 

Salgado’s images convey immediacy of the moment and work as an archive to offer historical testimony of time and place through lived experience. This longevity infers his ethical stance to global image making, along with his continued humanitarian and environmental activism as a Unicef Goodwill Ambassador and a founding member of Instituto Terra committed to restoration of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil.