Sebastiao Salgado: From My Land to the Planet

Sebastião Salgado's photographs have been shown around the world. In From my land to the Planet the photographer tells us the story of his most famous reportages, the black and white portraits of unknown men and women, workers or refugees, and more recently his Genesis project aimed at the conservation of the most beautiful places of our planet.

With a kindness and a disarming simplicity, Salgado rebuilds its path, exposes his beliefs, makes us sharers of his emotions. It turns out that his talent as a storyteller and the authenticity of a man who knows how to combine activism and professionalism, talent and generosity. Inside the book there are fascinating stories of Africa, Brazil, the Americas, Mozambique and Rwanda, and then again the birth of the Instituto Terra, of Genesis project, of the agency Magnum Photos until Amazonas Images.

“I very much like to work on long-term projects...There is time for the photographer and the people in front of the camera to understand each other. There is time to go to a place and understand what is happening there. ...When you spend more time on a project, you learn to understand your subjects. There comes a time when it is not you who is taking the pictures. Something special happens between the photographer and the people he is photographing. He realizes that they are giving the pictures to him. With my background as an economist, sociologist, and anthropologist my photograpy can be nothing but social. Everything in my background, my upbrising, my education, my focus on sociology, anthropology, and geopolitics—has speeded into my photography. Photography, for me, is continuity." Sebastião Salgado