Farewell to Sebastião Salgado
Sebastião Salgado has passed away at the age of 81. He had contracted malaria while working in the field, and had battled with the disease since 2010. His death was recently announced by the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France.
He was born in Brazil and immigrated to Paris in 1969, where he became an acclaimed photographer. From 1994 onwards, he organised his photographic journeys and the global success of his thematic exhibitions with his own agency.
Thanks to the complexity of his oeuvre, by the turn of the millennium Salgado’s role and significance had far surpassed that of being merely “the most important photographer of his time”. The artistic value of his photography went hand in hand with his environmental activism, lending global impact to his images. In his work, he directly confronted the distressing circumstances that threaten life on Earth, conditions caused by human irresponsibility. He explored these issues in his beautiful and at the same time heart-wrenching nature photography as well as his curatorial and film work. In recent decades, he regularly presented the results of his meticulously prepared photographic expeditions to the world, revealing the breath-taking beauty of untouched landscapes and reminding humanity of the fragile balance of nature.
With the help of his wife, Lélia, we were able to bring his immensely popular exhibition to the Műcsarnok. The show, which opened in autumn 2017, featured key works from his most recent project Genesis: this series captured those parts of the Earth which, still untouched by modern civilisation, continue to exist in the harmony of creation, for now.
At the opening of the Műcsarnok exhibition, I had the opportunity to say that the importance of environmental protection had become something of a platitude by now, so much so that we barely register it when it is mentioned. But in Salgado’s photographs, this theme is presented with such force that even the most indifferent viewer is deeply moved and experiences it all at a personal level. The exhibition’s patron was Her Excellency Maria Laura da Rocha, Ambassador of Brazil, who expressed her pride in Salgado not only for his photography but because he personally restored a previously deforested and desertified area that had once been part of a lush rainforest. Today, this place is once again a sanctuary, home to an astonishingly rich diversity of plant and animal life. This environmental effort was also Salgado’s way of making amends for his ancestors, who had acquired land for animal husbandry through deforestation. The project’s base was the very estate he had inherited as a family legacy… his was an exemplary act in a world increasingly blinded by profit. Later, he also filmed the Amazon rainforest and the skies above it from an airplane. Together with a colleague who had helped install one of his exhibitions in Budapest, we watched these films in Rome and felt that Salgado had not only changed dimensions in a spatial sense as his work mediated a sacred quality for all.
Here, at the Műcsarnok, we exhibited fascinating photographs taken by Salgado across five geographic regions: Sanctuaries, Southern Lands, Africa, the Amazon, the Pantanal, and the Arctic Circle. The installation process was a true joy for the team involved, crowned by Lélia’s warm appreciation. Many of the images left us feeling that we were able to ‘make eye contact’ with those captured in them. It was as though we could glimpse into the very souls of these people despite the immense physical and cultural distance between us, watching their threatened lands with compassionate solidarity… A film screened during the exhibition – The Salt of the Earth, co-directed by Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son and nominated for an Academy Award – further amplified this emotional connection.
Now we, too – my colleagues at Műcsarnok and I – share in the deep sorrow of Salgado’s family and, indeed, of all humanity.
György Szegő DLA
Artistic Director
Műcsarnok - Kunsthalle Budapest
2025. May 23. Friday 2:27