Brazilian photographer, Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts

Sebastião Salgado: «I am possibly the photographer who has worked the most in the world»

The famous Brazilian creator, Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts, exhibits in Madrid 200 snapshots taken over seven years in the lungs of the planet
Sebastiao Salgado: «Magnum is a great agency but it is outdated»

He has something of a shaman that hypnotizes. At 79 years old ("I'm already 80, I turned 79 in February"), Sebastião Salgado (Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1944) is in very good condition, although he admits that he is tired. He is not strange. This famous photographer with a nomadic soul

Sebastião Salgado's (Brazil, 1944) crusade for the care of the planet with which he has linked his prestigious work as a photographer is closely linked to the Amazon. To this gigantic and vital area of our world he has dedicated the last years of his work in a vast exhibition and editorial project that under the name of Amazônia wants to stir consciences in the nations that with their daily consumption deplete, hectare by hectare, an ecosystem of the that we all depend
Amazônia is a production that has taken more than six years and several expeditions to document a natural and cultural treasure at risk. A photographic adventure that has required traveling on planes, mainly with the Brazilian Army, and boats to move through the Amazon and its tributaries.

“When you do these expeditions you have to take boat captains, cooks, medicines, equipment, batteries, solar panels, also anthropologists, a translator and two forest captains, who are guys who know how to fish, hunt, know how to climb trees, ride a camp among the forest and moving through the forest without losing your way,” explains the 1998 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts.

The result of these years of exhaustive documentary work is a book (published by Taschen) and a traveling exhibition that from September 13 can be seen at the Cultural Center of the Villa. More than 200 large format photographs, seven films, a soundtrack composed especially for the occasion by Jean Michel Jarre and a setting with the sounds of the Amazon. A project that is supported by its high cost by corporate sponsorships such as the insurance company Zurich and Telefónica. "It is possibly one of the most complete presentations that has already been made about the Amazon system," says Salgado.

Question: Will the Amazon documented in this project be seen the same over the years?

Answer: I am hopeful that it will remain. The reason for this exhibition that we are taking to the great capitals of the world is to raise people's awareness, because the destruction of the Amazon comes, mainly, through our consumer society. Through this exhibition we want to raise awareness among people, decision makers, capitalist investors and industrial groups not to use products that contribute to the destruction of their ecosystems. It is a crusade, we try to ensure that the people who leave the exhibition are not the same as those who entered because of the information they have received along with my photographs. I make an aesthetic presentation but it is the interviews with indigenous leaders in the exhibition that provide a political and social point of view.

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