TEACHING RESOURCES

Download Salgado Curriculum, containing entire "Teaching Resources" section [pdf] »

If you have questions or comments, please visit our Educational Contact page »

OVERVIEW: iNTRODUCTION TO «EXODUS»

Sebastião Salgado is regarded today as the world’s foremost photojournalist. Since the 1970s, he has photographed on every continent, covering everything from golf tournaments to civil wars. In 1981, while retained by Time magazine to photograph President Ronald Reagan, he happened to be outside the Washington Hilton when the President was shot. The seventy-six images he made that day with three cameras were circulated throughout the world.

Yet Salgado is not celebrated for capturing single images that define an event. In the 1980s, while working with Magnum Photos, Europe’s elite, photo-cooperative, he began shaping a new photographic approach called “the long-term documentary story” that changed the trajectory of his career. Photojournalists, by necessity, are called to cover events of a week, a day, or even an hour. After they’ve produced their photos and met their deadline, they are off to cover the next story. Salgado chafed at this mode of working, and found a way to cover stories more deeply and over longer time periods.

“Exodus,” his second long-term project, was started in 1993 and carried out in 40 countries over a six-year span. During this time, Salgado traveled through Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, stopping in trouble spots where civil war, ethnic strife, or rural poverty had taken hold. In each area, he worked among migrants, refugees, and exiles, documenting the circumstances of their flight and their uncertain destinations and destinies. “Exodus” the exhibit, comprised of 300 images, contains five sections and presents the story of the global movement of populations at the end of the millennia. In each section, images dramatically depict the unprecedented circumstances in which millions now find themselves, helping us grasp both the tragic plight of refugees and their resilience and dignity in the face of hardship.

What make Salgado’s work so timely for us today is that everything on our planet seems to be in a state of flux. We are changing at home, and we are seeing other countries deal with this eternal question of cultural diversity, integration, language, custom, law, and immigration. Salgado’s riveting black-and-white images compel us to ask: What do these migrations have to do with us? Who is moving? Why are they leaving? Where are they going? And how will we be affected? “Exodus” is not merely an exhibit. It is a doorway that invites us to behold the world as it appears at the end of the twentieth and the start of the twenty-first century.