Sebastião Salgado
[Photographer, b. 1944, Aimores, Minas Gerias, Brazil, lives in Paris and Brazil.]
What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this.
For me, photography is so integrated in my life, it has become a way of life.
The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more or less good in function of the relationship you have with the people you photograph.
You need to be accepted by reality.
Because, you know, the photographs... are more a question than a reply.
I don’t want anyone to appreciate the light or the palette of tones. I want my pictures to inform, to provoke discussion—and to raise money.
If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things.
Everything that happens in the world must be shown and people around the world must have an idea of what’s happening to the other people around the world. I believe this is the function of the vector that the documentary photographer must have, to show one person’s existence to another.
