Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado, born 1944 in Aimorés, Brazil, is actually a holder of a doctorate in economics but he chose to abandon a career as an economist and switched to photography. In 1994 he formed with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado their own photo agency called Amazonas Images,

Salgado is particularly noted for his social documentary photography of workers in less developed nations. He works on long term projects (5 to 7 years) in which he documents the life and the misery of people especially from the Third World. His impressive black and white pictures are released in beautiful and moving illustrated books and touring exhibitions.

He is mostly famous for his photographic documentary of the inhuman working conditions of day laborers in a Brazilian gold mine called Serra Pelada from 1986 – a journey back to the medieval age.

In another project Salgado approached one of the most urging future problems of the world – the issue of water. One of the most difficult challenges to solve is to enable everyone an adequate access to clean water resources. According to the foundation founder Michael Horbach this cannot be done by means of the neoliberal politic of privatization.