Sebastião Salgado, one of the great documentary photographers, died on Friday. I have been fascinated by his work since I saw the film The Salt of the Earth, a documentary about Salgado directed by his son Juliano and Wim Wenders. His dramatic, contrasty black-and-white images are a large part of what has inspired me to shift towards black-and-white photography.
But, given my concern for the environment, it is not surprising that I think his environmentalism was as important as his photography. With his wife Leila, he set up the Instituto Terra in 1998 with the purpose of restoring part of the Atlantic Forest in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Since then, it has restored 2,000 hectares of land and produced nearly 7 million seedlings. It has also become a major centre for environmental education.
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