LONDON.- He Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgadowhich presents in London retrospective of his 50-year career, explains in an interview with AFP that people must be made aware of the deforestation of the planet.
“Photography is the mirror of society,” he adds, after being awarded in London for his career, to summarize the objective he has sought with half a century of work, focusing in recent years on the protection of nature.
Salgado, 80, presents at London’s Somerset House, from this Friday until May 6, a small but representative selection of the hundreds of thousands of snapshots he has taken in his career. “It is a selection. One is never happy, because there are about 50 photographs and so few cannot present 50 years of career. Each one represents a moment in my life that has been very important to me,” he says.
The exhibition follows the award given to him by the London-based World Photography Organisation, in recognition of his career, and accompanies another wider display of the 2024 Sony World Photography Awards.
“It is the reward for a lifetime’s work,” says Salgado, gratefully.
“Emissary of society”
Sebastiao Salgado thus adds one more award to his extensive career, which includes, among many others, the 1998 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts.
“A photographer has the privilege of being where things happen. In an exhibition like this, people tell me that I am an artist and I tell them no, I am a photographer and it is a great privilege to be one. I have been an emissary of society of which I am a part,” he emphasizes.
After studying economics, he started taking photographs in 1973 and never left that world.
In 1998, together with his wife Lelia, he formed the Terra Institute, in his fight to reforest the Brazilian Amazon and the planet in general.
“We have lost 18.2% of the Amazon. But it has not been only the Brazilians or other countries in that region that have destroyed that, it has been our consumer society, due to a terrible need for consumption that we have, for profit.” , it states.
“If we make people aware that together we could do things differently, we could save this great forest on which we depend for biodiversity and also for this great cultural reserve that are the indigenous tribes that live in the Amazon,” he adds. .
“Information is missing”
In recent years, global warming and water loss have been added to the progressive deforestation of the planet, according to Salgado.
“There is a second drama as important as global warming, which is the loss of water. The south of France is a place where it always rained and in recent years, a large number of communities there are being supplied in the summer by trucks. of water. This was something that happened in Africa and is now happening in Europe, where we are losing water,” he warns.
“But the worst thing with warming, with the loss of water, is the loss of biodiversity. We are losing biodiversity at a terrible speed. We have to do something because if not, in a few days, it will be complicated. Plants They don’t have pollination because they don’t have insects. In the last 40 years, Germany has lost 70% of its biodiversity,” he says.
“We must provide information, it is not that people are bad, it is that there is a lack of correct information and people’s awareness,” he insists.
In this last stage of his life, Salgado continues his fight for the defense of the environment without major professional objectives.
“I have to die now. I have 50 years of career and I have turned 80. I am closer to death than anything else. One lives at most 90. So I am not far away, but I continue to photograph, I continue to work, I continue to do the usual things.” same way,” he explains.
“I have no concern or any pretensions about how I will be remembered. It is my life that is in the photos and nothing more,” he concludes.
FUENTE: AFP
