French-Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, famed for his immense body of work depicting wildlife, landscapes and people around the world, died on Friday, May 23, aged 81, announced the French Academy of Fine Arts, of which he was a member. The academy said it is "deeply saddened to announce the death (...) of Sebastiao Salgado," describing him as a "great witness to the human condition and the state of the planet."
"A photographer who travelled the world constantly, he contracted a particular form of malaria in 2010, in Indonesia," his family said, in a statement given to Agence France-Presse (AFP). "Fifteen years later, the complications of this disease developed into severe leukaemia, which took his life," they added.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva described his compatriot as "one of the best (...) photographers the world has given us." Lula learnt the news of Salgado's passing at an official event in Brasilia with his Angolan counterpart, Joao Lourenco, and asked attendees to observe a minute of silence for Salgado.
The photographer leaves a unique legacy of images from his hundreds of journeys through the Amazon rainforest and across the planet, from Rwanda to Indonesia, from Guatemala to Bangladesh, capturing human tragedies, such as famine, wars and mass exoduses, with his lens.
It was for his large black and white photographs of subjects such as conflicts or the Amazon rainforest that won Salgado the greatest fame and adorned calendars, books and the walls of his fans around the world. Critics accused him of beautifying suffering, but Salgado never veered from his aesthetic or his work.
Salgado conceived of photography as "a powerful language to try to establish better relationships between humans and nature," said the French Academy of Fine Arts. He worked almost exclusively in black and white, which he saw as both an interpretation of reality and a way of conveying the fundamental dignity of humanity.
Born on February 8, 1944, in the town of Aimorés, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Salgado studied economics. He was active in the left-wing student movements of the turbulent 1960s, and, in 1969, he and his wife, Lelia Wanick, fled to France to escape Brazil's military dictatorship. He went on to receive French citizenship.
His photos of drought and famine in countries such as Niger and Ethiopia landed him a job at renowned photo agency Magnum in 1979.
A dedicated climate activist, he was a fierce critic of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) for the far-right leader's push to open the Amazon to agribusiness and mining. Salgado also founded an environmental organisation called Instituto Terra to revive disappearing forests in his home state, Minas Gerais, a successful project joined by more than 3,000 landowners.
Photography "is a way of life," he told AFP in 2022, on a trip to Sao Paulo to present his exhibition "Amazonia," the product of seven years shooting the world's biggest rainforest.