Sebastião Salgado’s career is an unusual arc through photojournalism, humanist documentary, and, later, [[Ecology|environmental]] [[Activism]] — and it has a complicated, often critical, relationship with both [[Capitalism]] and [[Ecology]]. 1. Early Career and Capitalist Context Salgado was born in 1944 in Aimorés, Brazil, and initially trained as an economist. His early professional life was embedded in the machinery of global capitalism: he worked for the International Coffee Organization in London in the 1970s, travelling extensively in [[Africa]]. It was during these trips that he began photographing, eventually leaving [[Economics]] for photography in 1973. That background mattered — Salgado had first-hand knowledge of global trade systems, commodity flows, and the economic forces shaping migration, famine, and industrial development. His photographic projects often examine precisely these forces, but from the viewpoint of the human beings caught inside them. Examples: - “Other Americas” (1986) – Rural life in Latin America, showing communities shaped and often marginalised by global economic structures. - “Sahel: The End of the Road” (1986) – Famine in Africa linked not only to drought but to economic policies and neo-colonial dependency. - “Workers” (1993) – A monumental survey of manual labour worldwide, from gold mining to shipbreaking — showing the physical reality underpinning global industry. While his images are often breathtakingly beautiful, critics have sometimes accused him of aestheticising suffering, creating images so visually striking that they risk being consumed as commodities in the very capitalist [[Art]] markets that exploit similar inequalities. 2. Capitalism and the Spectacle Salgado has acknowledged that the global distribution of his books and exhibitions depends on wealthy institutions and collectors — a paradox for someone critical of the systems that create the suffering he photographs. He operates within the high-value art world, yet his themes are deeply anti-capitalist in tone: - Showing the expendability of human labour in a mechanising economy. - Tracing forced migration caused by [[War]], poverty, and economic restructuring. - Connecting environmental degradation to extractive industry. His work can be read as a Marxian visual archive — labour, alienation, exploitation — but it is also presented in coffee-table books and glossy exhibitions that circulate in elite cultural spaces, where the market appetite for “humanist suffering” images can itself become exploitative. 3. Turn to Ecology By the late 1990s, Salgado shifted from industrial and human labour themes to an ecological focus. After years photographing human dislocation (Migrations, 2000) and witnessing mass-scale environmental destruction, he suffered burnout. Returning to his family’s former cattle ranch in Brazil’s Minas Gerais, he found it degraded by deforestation and [[Soil]] erosion. He and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado co-founded the Instituto Terra (1998), a reforestation project that has restored thousands of hectares of Atlantic Forest. This personal ecological intervention mirrored a shift in his photography. 4. “Genesis” and the Ecological Vision In “Genesis” (2013), Salgado spent eight years photographing what he calls “unspoiled” parts of the planet: - [[Indigenous]] communities relatively untouched by industrial capitalism. - Wildlife and landscapes with minimal human impact. - Polar regions, deserts, tropical forests. Here the relationship to capitalism is twofold: - Critique – by showing what is at stake, he implicitly argues against the ecological destruction driven by extractive markets. - Commodification – the photographs themselves are luxury art objects; their very circulation depends on the same wealth networks and carbon-intensive global exhibition systems that contribute to ecological strain. 5. Salgado’s Position Between Systems Salgado’s career can be understood as occupying a border zone: - Critical of capitalism – documenting its costs in human and environmental terms. - Dependent on capitalism – for the funding, infrastructure, and audience that give his work impact. - Ecological activist – not just through images, but through the literal act of reforesting land, tying his personal legacy to material environmental repair. In essence, his photography presents an aesthetic and moral counter-narrative to capitalist exploitation and ecological degradation, yet cannot entirely escape the structures he critiques. Very well, Lord Thomas — here is a thematic timeline of Sebastião Salgado’s career, with his major projects positioned alongside significant global events in capitalism and ecology. Sebastião Salgado: Photography, Capitalism, and Ecology — A Thematic Timeline ![[D5ABBA20-42C1-400F-A511-2E63223E0393.png]] 1944–1972 | Early Life & Economics - 1944 – Born in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in a rural farming family. - 1960s–70s – Studies [[Economics]], influenced by developmental and Marxist thought. - 1971 – Moves to London to work for the International Coffee Organization — gaining insight into commodity trade and global markets. - Capitalism Context: Post-war industrial expansion; commodity booms; Bretton Woods system collapse (1971). - Ecology Context: First UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972) signals emerging global ecological [[Awareness]]. 1973–1985 | Photojournalism & Structural Inequality - 1973 – Leaves economics for photography, joins Sygma and later Gamma agencies. - Early projects – Famine in Africa, rural poverty in Latin America. - 1986 – Other Americas published — focus on traditional rural communities in Latin America. - Capitalism Context: Debt crises in Latin America; [[The International Monetary Fund|IMF]] structural adjustment programmes reshape economies. - Ecology Context: African Sahel droughts partly caused by overgrazing and climate patterns; links between economic policies and environmental degradation emerge. 1986–1993 | Labour in the Global System - 1986 – Sahel: The End of the Road (with Médecins Sans Frontières) — famine and displacement. - 1993 – Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age — monumental record of manual labour in mines, steelworks, shipbreaking yards, sugar cane fields. - Capitalism Context: Late Cold War globalisation; automation begins to displace industrial labour; rise of neoliberalism. - Ecology Context: Heavy industry’s environmental toll increasingly documented; environmental justice movements grow. 1993–2000 | Global Displacement & Human Crisis - 1993–99 – Migrations — mass movements of people due to war, famine, economic collapse, environmental disaster. - Capitalism Context: Post–Cold War neoliberal dominance; emerging markets boom; growing economic inequality. - Ecology Context: Refugee crises linked to resource depletion; concept of “climate refugees” begins to gain currency. 1998–2004 | Collapse & Renewal - 1998 – Salgado and his wife found Instituto Terra to restore degraded Atlantic Forest on their family’s land. - 2004 – Atlantic Forest reforestation well underway, transforming barren cattle pasture into a thriving ecosystem. - Capitalism Context: Global financial crises in Asia and Latin America; extractive industries expand in the Global South. - Ecology Context: UN declares 2000–2010 the International Decade for a Culture of Peace, with ecological restoration gaining attention. 2004–2013 | “Genesis” — Pristine Earth - 2004–2013 – Genesis project: 32 expeditions to photograph wildlife, landscapes, and indigenous cultures minimally impacted by industrial modernity. - 2013 – Exhibition and book published; framed as a visual “[[Knowledge/Love]] letter” to the planet’s remaining intact ecosystems. - Capitalism Context: Financial crisis of 2008 exposes fragility of global markets; resource extraction intensifies in previously untouched regions. - Ecology Context: [[Climate Change]] firmly on global agenda; Copenhagen Climate Summit (2009); debates on conservation vs. development. 2014–Present | Reflection & Advocacy - 2014 – Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado release The Salt of the Earth, a film about Salgado’s life and work. - Recent Work – Continues environmental advocacy through Instituto Terra; speaks publicly on the need for systemic change to address ecological collapse. - Capitalism Context: Climate capitalism — attempts to integrate environmentalism into market frameworks. - Ecology Context: Acceleration of biodiversity loss; IPCC warnings; global climate protests. Structural Pattern 1. 1970s–80s – Human impact of economic systems. 2. 1990s – Displacement and migration as a result of capitalism’s expansion. 3. 2000s – Shift to restoration and ecological themes. 4. 2010s–present – Advocacy for planetary health, while still operating within elite art market circuits. `Concepts:` `Knowledge Base:`