Seeing the World Through Sebastião Salgado's Lens

Sebastião Salgado’s photography doesn’t just document—it compels you to stop and take in the weight of what you’re seeing. One of his most recognised images shows hundreds of men swarming up rickety ladders, clinging to the steep walls of a giant open-pit mine. At first glance, it could be mistaken for a mythic descent into the underworld, or a lost civilisation. But it’s not fiction. It’s the Serra Pelada gold mine in 1980s Brazil, and the photograph is part of a powerful series capturing the human frenzy of the gold rush. The image, like so many of his, feels strangely timeless—capturing something real and urgent, but also distant, as if from another world.

To accompany this article, I’ve included a gallery of my favourite Salgado images—an attempt to show the range and depth of his work beyond just the most iconic moments.

A Career Rooted in Curiosity and Commitment

Salgado is known primarily as a photojournalist, but that label doesn’t quite capture the scale of what he does. Over decades, he’s created expansive projects on themes of labour, migration, nature, and war. His images explore global stories that often unfold far from the spotlight. From the surreal spectacle of Serra Pelada to the unspoiled beauty of his Genesis series—an exploration of remote landscapes and cultures untouched by modern life—his work consistently reveals realities many of us would otherwise never encounter.

His photographs are nearly always in black and white, not out of nostalgia, but because it strips things back to their essence. He says: “When I first took a camera, I had never looked through a viewfinder in all my life.” That first moment, holding a camera, would go on to shape a life’s work.

From Economics to the Eye of the Storm

Born on a farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Salgado originally trained in economics, earning a PhD and working with the International Coffee Organisation. It was while travelling for that job in the 1970s that he began taking photographs seriously. The shift wasn’t planned, but it felt right.

“The human animal is a political animal,” he says—and this interest in human systems, in dignity, in environmental degradation, all comes through in his work. But he’s clear that he doesn’t see himself as an activist. For him, photography has always been about discovery and experience. “All the adventure to be there,” he recalls of documenting Kuwait’s oil fires after the Gulf War.

A Life-Long Collaboration with Lélia Wanick

Salgado’s work has always been closely tied to his wife and collaborator, Lélia Wanick. Their Paris studio is where they design the books that present his photographic series—elegant volumes that give shape and structure to the stories his images tell. More recently, the pair have also undertaken an environmental restoration project, reforesting the Salgado family land in Brazil. The personal and professional parts of their lives are deeply intertwined, and their shared vision is key to the legacy of his work.

Capturing the ‘Decisive Moment’

A photograph, Salgado says, is just a fraction of a second. “Photography is one 250th of a second.” But getting to that single frame takes time—lots of it. “You know where you’ll go, but you don’t know what you will bring back.” He talks about needing to immerse himself in a setting, to understand the people, the rhythm of life, the light, the landscape. “There are a lot of variables. There must be light. There must be power. There must be personality if it’s a portrait.”

This attention to context is what allows him to capture what Henri Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment”—an instant of clarity, honesty, or impact. In Genesis, we see a whale’s eye breaking the ocean’s surface, or a baboon pausing on a dune. These aren’t random shots. They’re part of a larger story.

Photography in the Digital Age

Salgado is wary of what digital technology has done to photography. “Your father and mother, when you were a child, they took precious photographs of you. They went to the shop on the corner to get them developed. That is a memory. That is photography.” He worries that photographs today—stored on phones, buried in folders—don’t carry the same meaning. “You lose your phone, you’ve lost your photographs.”

He also notes the growing gap between photography as documentation and as manipulated image. “Before, we took a picture. It was reality.” In a world of filters, edits, and augmented reality, Salgado remains committed to showing things as they are.

A Visual Style That Speaks Volumes

One of the things that sets Salgado’s photography apart is its depth—both emotional and literal. He explains his technique simply: “I work with very fast film. I always close my diaphragm to give a huge depth of field. Volumes for me are very important.” The result is a sense of space and presence. You feel like you’re standing in the scene, not just looking at it.

That’s particularly true in his photographs of human migration and disaster. In one frame, people trudge along a forest path, many collapsed from exhaustion. In another, refugees fade into the distance among a sea of tents. The clarity of detail pulls you in; the sheer scale of what’s happening keeps you there.

“Reality,” Salgado says, “is full of depth of field.”

Putting Humanity into the Frame

Ultimately, it’s not just technical skill that defines Salgado’s photography. It’s the way he brings his own perspective into every shot. “In this moment, you bring your history and your ideas to what is in front of you. That is a photograph.” The result is a body of work that’s political, human, and enduring.

Whether he’s documenting labourers, landscapes, or lives interrupted by conflict, Salgado’s images connect us to something larger. Not through spectacle, but through attention—and care.

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