“With a globally recognized career, Sebastião Salgado, through the black and white images he left us, made an important contribution to the artistic field, photojournalism, and documentary work,” stated the minister in a communiqué.
Dalila Rodrigues also recalled Sebastião Salgado’s dedication to environmental causes, alongside his wife Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, notably through the Instituto Terra, a non-governmental organization focused on reforestation and biodiversity restoration of the Atlantic Forest, sustainable rural development, and environmental education.
Considered one of the world’s foremost photographers, Sebastião Salgado passed away today at the age of 81.
Throughout his life, he received the world’s top photography awards and passed away on the day of the opening of the exhibition “Venham Mais Cinco — O Olhar Estrangeiro sobre a Revolução Portuguesa (1974-1975)” in Almada, which includes his photos taken during the Portuguese revolution.
At the time of the April 25, 1974 revolution, Sebastião Salgado was living in Paris with his family and began dedicating himself to photography after studying Economics.
He documented those early days of transition in Portugal, as well as in Angola and Mozambique, while working for the agencies Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum.
“All people with libertarian ideas in Europe went to Portugal, hoping it would become a great democratic country with advanced social ideas. Portugal was a dream. Gradually, that dream landed because I remember that to buy a kilo of meat at a butcher, you would wait an hour in line. Everyone was discussing politics,” Sebastião Salgado said in a 2024 interview with Público newspaper about his time in Portugal.
Born on February 8, 1944, in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, Sebastião Salgado graduated in Economics and began his photography career in Paris in 1973.
Salgado was the subject of a major exhibition in Portugal in 1993 during the inauguration of the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, where around 250 images were showcased.
In 2014, he exhibited the series “Genesis” in Lisbon, dedicated to nature, at the Torreão Nascente of the Cordoaria Nacional.
A year later, the documentary “The Salt of the Earth,” by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, about the Brazilian photographer, was shown in Portuguese cinemas.
As a member of the Sygma, Gamma, and later Magnum photography agencies, Sebastião Salgado founded Amazonas Images with his wife, Lélia Wanick, in 1994, and together they created the Instituto Terra for the reforestation of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
