ABOUT SEBASTIÃO SALGADO
Recording the human condition with compassion

Born in 1944 in Aimores, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado studied economics in Brazil and the United States. In 1971, he earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Paris and worked as an economist for the International Coffee Organization until 1973.

After borrowing his wife Lélia’s camera on a trip to Africa in 1973, he decided to switch to photography and joined the Sygma photo agency (1974-1975), followed by the Gamma agency (1975-1979). He then was elected to membership in the international cooperative, Magnum Photos, and remained with the organization from 1979-94. From his base in Paris, he covered news events such as wars in Angola and the Spanish Sahara, the taking of Israeli hostages in Entebbe, and the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, while he also started to pursue more personal and in-depth documentary projects.

For seven years (1977-1984), he roamed Latin America to produce the images for his eventual book and exhibition Other Americas (1986)—a meditative exploration of peasant cultures and the cultural resistance of Indians and their descendants in Mexico and Brazil.

In the mid-1980s, he worked for 15 months with the French aid group Doctors Without Borders in the drought-stricken Sahel region of Africa and created Sahel: L’Homme en Détresse (Sahel: Man in Distress) (1986), a document on the dignity and endurance of people in

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