The Salt of the Earth

More than 20 years ago, filmmaker Wim Wenders’s eye was caught by a photograph of a blind Berber woman. To this day the picture still hangs in his studio. The man who took it is Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photographer who has made countless journeys around the world. He lived with indigenous people and in refugee camps for months and sometimes years at a time, and he always returned with powerful images that move, shock or surprise. Salgado is a man marked by the life he has led, and his quiet voice accompanies the black-and-white photographs, some of them depicting unimaginable tragedies and cruelties. “There’s no animal that’s as aggressive as humans,” he says. But what is a photographer to do when, after the umpteenth trip, he no longer wants to – or is able to – document new atrocities? Salgado had his own solution for that, so together with his son he took his camera to film among walruses and polar bears, to show that there are still many untainted places in the world. He also replants a rainforest in his native region. Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son Juliano Ribeiro have created an exquisite overview of this passionate photographer’s extensive oeuvre, and of the man himself – a man who believes that every story, no matter how barbaric, deserves to be told.