Until his death in 2025, Sebastião Salgado dedicated his life to documenting what many people ignore. For five decades, he traveled to more than 120 countries, documenting miners, immigrants, rainforests, rivers, and ways of life that are gradually disappearing.
Salgado is known for his distinctive black and white photography, and his archive of work is both global and deeply personal, focusing on themes of labor, displacement, beauty and survival.
In 1973, he gave up a promising career in economics to devote himself to photography. Over the years, his work has captured the famine in Ethiopia, the oil field fires in Kuwait, and life in the heart of the Amazon, where he spent years with indigenous communities.
In his later years, he turned to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) as another way to preserve, publish and interpret his work. His 2022 collection of photographic works, "Amazonia," brings together 5,000 photographs, the proceeds of which will be donated to Instituto Terra, the environmental non-profit organization he co-founded with his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado.
Salgado often says that photography is like a language, as he wrote on Instagram:
Photography is my language, the language in which I express myself. Many people have said to me, "Sebastião, you have seen so many interesting things on this planet, you have had the opportunity to visit those incredible places, you must write it down." I replied that I have already written with photography, it is a language of perpetual exploration, containing immense depth, which you cannot define a priori.
The following details how Salgado embraces NFTs and uses his work to inspire his activism.
Sebastião Salgado is a prestigious photographer with decades of experience
Although Salgado was a newcomer to the NFT world when he minted his Genesis collection, his acclaimed photography has shaken the art world for decades. One of his important photography projects, "Another America," along with other famous works, highlights his significance. His career began with a move from São Paulo, Brazil to Paris, France, and working for photography agencies such as Magnum, where his iconic black and white photography flourished.
As (The Guardian) described in a profile of his work, Salgado "rose quickly in Paris."
In 2022, Sotheby's held a 'Magnum Opus' auction of Salgado's work, documenting his most influential photography from 1978 to 2018. His photography career spans 50 years and has taken him to more than 100 countries.
According to (The Guardian), he spent 90 days in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, twice as long as evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin. He also documented the burning oil fields of Kuwait and members of various tribes in the Brazilian Amazon.
According to ArtNet, Salgado's raison d'être has always been to elevate and focus on the daily realities of others:
I want the world to remember the issues and people I photograph. I hope these photographs spark a discussion about what is happening around the world and spark some debate.
His first NFT series looks back at his time in the Brazilian Amazon
Salgado's first and only NFT collection, "Amazonia," was minted in September 2022, documenting Salgado's life with 12 tribes in the Brazilian Amazon, recording the lives of different indigenous people. Salgado has provided text descriptions for each image to help viewers better understand their meaning.
For example, in #2030, Salgado delves into the background and development of the Yawanawa tribe, pointing out how the tribe has transformed in the past 50 years from a community deeply affected by generational trauma to a society of 1,200 members who, under the leadership of Biraci Brasil Yawanawá, have rediscovered their language, traditions, and identity.
Salgado divides these collections into ten categories or characteristics, including forests, aerial views, mountains, rapids, tropical storms, and five tribes - the Yanomami, Yawanawa, Marubo, Anavilhanas, and Suruwaha.
The collection consists of 5,000 pieces, including 1/1 photographs and a 1/1 NFT short film (Tree of Life). Sotheby's explained that it contains "original audio and over 102 indigenous people hidden within it." The acclaimed art institution auctioned off the collection, with all primary and secondary proceeds going directly to Salgado's non-profit organization, Instituto Terra.
He co-founded the environmental restoration non-profit Instituto Terra with his wife
In the early 1990s, Salgado was documenting the Rwandan genocide when a doctor advised him to resign. The doctor explained that Salgado's health problems, including symptoms of depression, were caused by excessive workload and prolonged immersion in traumatic experiences. Salgado took the doctor's advice to heart and shifted his focus from photography to co-founding Instituto Terra with his wife and creative partner Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado.
Instituto Terra is a non-profit organization dedicated to environmental restoration and sustainable rural development in Brazil. Its focus is on an old cattle ranch inherited by Salgado from his family, which has now been transformed into a Private Natural Heritage Reserve. Since 1998, the organization has planted more than 3 million trees, revitalized more than 2,000 water springs, and held a series of educational programs on conservation and restoration.
All proceeds from Salgado's latest works at Sotheby's auctions were donated to Institutio Terra. In an interview, Salgado also explained that he was only able to return to photography after dedicating himself to these environmental causes. He shifted from only photographing people to photographing the environment and other animals.
Throughout Salgado's work, it is inspiring that his world travels have led him to deeply question his impact on the world around him and, in doing so, challenge fans of his work to do the same.
His work has earned him countless awards and accolades in the field of photography
Salgado has won many of the highest honors in the photography world. He has received the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, the Hasselblad Award, and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Award. These awards not only recognize the beauty of his photos, but also the moving stories behind them.
The French government awarded him the Knight of the Legion of Honor for his global influence. In 1993, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain awarded him the Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship in recognition of his mark on the field of photography.
His photographs have been included in acclaimed books such as (Migrations and Genesis) and have been exhibited by major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In 2016, he won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for (Kuwait: A Desert on Fire), which documented the environmental and human damage caused by the Gulf War. Brazil also awarded him the nation's highest honor - the Order of the Southern Cross.
Salgado's artistic legacy continues to inspire people around the world with its stunning visual art, journalistic honesty, and unwavering commitment to witnessing the world. Throughout Salgado's work, we can clearly see that his global travels have led him to deeply reflect on his impact on the world around him, and in doing so, inspire his fans to think about this issue as well.
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