On 23 May 2025, Sebastião Salgado passed away in Paris. He was 81 years old. With him goes not only one of the greatest photographers of our time, but also a visionary witness to humanity and nature, capable of transforming photography into an instrument of justice and rebirth. Stricken with leukaemia after contracting malaria years ago during a reportage in Indonesia, Salgado leaves a profound legacy: a world told without filters, but always with respect, empathy and passion.
From business to photography: the choice to change lives
Born in 1944 in Aimorés, in the heart of Brazil, Salgado had begun his career as an economist. But in the 1970s, whilst living in France with his wife Lélia, he realised that numbers were no longer enough for him. He needed images. And so he began to document conflict, famine, migration, natural disasters, but also the strength and dignity of peoples, the wild beauty of the planet, and the toil and pride of human labour.
His hypnotic, dense black and white, laden with chiaroscuro and humanity, became his signature style. But black and white, he said, “is not an aesthetic choice: it is a form of concentration. It eliminates the superfluous and lets the essence speak.”
The lens focused on pain, never giving in to voyeurism
Salgado has travelled more than 120 countries, chronicling the great exoduses of hunger and war, the inhumane toil of Serra Pelada miners, the tragedy of genocide in Rwanda, the epic of migrants fleeing the Sahel. In his shots there is never complacency. There is denunciation, of course, but also compassion.
He himself, however, was at one point overwhelmed by the pain he related. After years of photographing suffering, he said he had lost faith in human beings. What saved him was nature. And a radical choice: to return to Brazil, where it all began.
Instituto Terra: photography becomes reforestation
In 1998, he and his wife founded Instituto Terra. In an area devastated by deforestation, the couple plants millions of trees, transforms a barren heath into a green lung, brings back birds, insects, mammals that disappeared decades ago. A biological and moral restoration, an act of love.
This commitment is reflected in his latest work, especially in the colossal Amazônia project, a seven-year photographic journey into the world’s most important forest. A silent cry against deforestation, but also a powerful tribute to indigenous peoples, their cultures, their ancestral knowledge. “The forest has a soul,” he said. And he tried to portray it.
Salgado was not looking for the perfect shot: he was looking for truth. And he found it in the slow gestures, the scarred faces, the calloused hands, the landscapes sculpted by light. His work has been recognised with every award imaginable, from international honours to exhibitions in the world’s greatest museums. But what remains, more than anything, is the lesson: seeing is not enough. One must learn to look. And looking, for Salgado, meant caring.
A legacy that won’t fade
With his Leica, he wrote one of the most intense and painful chronicles of our time. But he also managed to show us that another future is possible. A future where art and engagement are not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing. Where beauty is not escapism, but resistance.
Sebastião Salgado has portrayed the Earth as a living organism. And he defended it with the same dedication with which a doctor defends their patient. His gaze remains with us.
