Exhibition in Brasilia brings together 150 photographs by Sebastião Salgado

Women and men who create, build and transform realities and materials with their own hands. They are workers and are at the core of the exhibition by Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, which will open to the public this Saturday (26th) in Brasília. The Workers exhibition inaugurates the temporary exhibition space of the Sesi Lab Museum, coordinated by the Social Service of Industry (Sesi), of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI).

Work experiences in different segments, as well as the arduous manual production processes and social dramas, are portrayed in black and white, in 150 images captured by Salgado, on trips he made over six years, from 1986 to 1992, in a record project of labor around the planet.
Aged 79, Sebastião Salgado was born in Minas Gerais and has lived in Paris since 1973. He explains that these photographs are a kind of visual investigation of the society that was the result of the Industrial Revolution, a period in which manual work was the center of life for many people. people around the world, according to him.

However, the photographer understands that there has been a change in the social organization of work, driven by the intervention of technology and information technology, with the automation of machinery and processes and, consequently, the reduction of manpower.

"In this project, I wanted to document the end of the first great industrial revolution, in which work was extremely important. For six years, I traveled the world in search of the presence of the human hand and in production. Intelligent machines were coming to production lines. computers and robotization were beginning to replace the workforce," observed Salgado.
Photographic exhibition
The Workers exhibition was curated and designed by graphic producer Lélia Wanick Salgado, wife of the photographer and his partner in the projects. The Brasília photographic exhibition is similarly structured as in the book Trabalhadores, uma Arqueologia na Era Industrial. Lélia also divided it into six chapters.

In the halls of the exhibition, the plurality of images illustrate the hard work routines in agriculture, mines and industries. Each photo, with lighting, angle and gray, black and white variations, reveals the world of work, from the perspective of Sebastião Salgado.

In Brazil, in particular, Sebastião Salgado froze in time a crowd of prospectors from Serra Pelada, in Serra dos Carajás, in Pará, who were piled up on wooden ladders, with loads of up to 65 kilos, on their backs. The largest mine in the country was officially closed in 1992 and left an 80-metre-deep crater and a lake polluted with mercury.

Another activity in the country widely documented by Sebastião Salgado was that of rural workers on sugar cane plantations, in times of ProÁlcool, the Brazilian government program to encourage the production of fuel alcohol, ethanol, to supply national vehicles.

Beyond the Brazilian borders, among other activities, tobacco planting in Cuba; tea leaf picking in Rwanda; building ships at the shipyard in Gdansk, Poland; the recycling of metals from scrapped ships in Bangladesh; the manufacture of cars in Ukraine and bicycles in China; the extraction of sulfur by intoxicated workers in a volcano on the island of Java, Indonesia; the exploitation of coal mines in India, by order of England; fighting oil well fires in Kuwait; tuna fishing in Sicily, Italy; and the steel industry in the port city of Dunkerque, France; and many other activities, in different destinations visited by Sebastião Salgado.

For camera professionals, more than a photographic exhibition, the show is a tribute to all workers.

“I had to pay tribute to this work that was in my heart, which was the reason for my political activism and what I believed to be the world of production. I carried out this project with immense pleasure and pride for being part of this type of builders, despite, of course, the often difficult and inhumane conditions in which the work was carried out. It is a joy to be able to present this photographic work in Brazil again, and an honor to be the first artist to exhibit in the exhibition gallery of the Sesi Lab Museum, in Brasília", highlighted Sebastião Salgado.

contemporaneity
The exhibition that arrives in Brasília this weekend has already visited 78 locations around the world. In Brazil, the first installations were simultaneous, in 1994, at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM), in Rio de Janeiro. Workers still visited Curitiba (PR) and the last time the works were presented in the country was at the headquarters of Itaipu Binacional, in Foz do Iguaçu (PR), in 2014.

The architect and general coordinator of the Trabalhadores exhibition, Álvaro Razuk, interprets that the exhibition remains current, even after about 30 years of Salgado's photographic records and almost a decade after it was seen by the Brazilian public.

“These photos are still relevant precisely because this problem has not gone away. There is still a lot of precarious work in the world. At all times, we continue to see news of work analogous to slavery, here in Brazil, too”, declares the architect.

For Razuk, the photographer's lens works serve as important research documents. “On the one hand, I expect this exhibition to become outdated, but, at the same time, the Workers [show] will be important as a historical account. I think that Sebastião's work has a bit of his background, in journalism, how he thinks, how he talks in his reports. So, I think this whole collection will be important for memory and documentation."

Education
Photographer Sebastião Salgado was invited to assemble Workers in the temporary exhibition space of the Sesi Lab Museum, by Sesi and the National Industrial Learning Service (Senai), both of CNI, for offering experiences that navigate in the fields of art, science and technology, according to the executive manager of Culture at Sesi, Cláudia Ramalho.

Claudia added that the nature of the exhibition is in connection with O Futuro das Profissões, the annual theme of Sesi Lab, in 2023. The space has been in operation since November 2022 and was inspired by the Exploratorium, a science, technology and arts museum in San Francisco, California in the United States.

For Cláudia Ramalho, Sesi Lab is a space whose mission is to educate and encourage visitors to reflect on social issues and the new exhibition contributes to this. “Our objective is to bring this discussion about the world of work and, mainly, related to professions, to Industry 4.0. We are going to bring content so that the population perceives and understands the importance of developing personal, social and productive skills, and, above all, so that these young people are able to work in these professions that we still don't know will exist in ten years, for example. And what is the most important skill? It is education and that is why we approach the theme in a playful way.”

The public
The Workers exhibition is aimed at the general public and was set up, in the federal capital, to be seen by workers, students, academics, and not only by professional photographers and those interested in photography.
With the experience, visitors will be able to understand the importance of the worker and value the need for dignity and better wages. Visits can be guided by professionals who have studied the plot of each exposed image.

At the official opening of the photographic exhibition, this Saturday (26th), at 3 pm, the documentary O Sal da Terra, directed by the German Wim Wenders and the Brazilian Juliano Salgado, son of Sebastião Salgado, will be shown. The film is about the trajectory of this artist, his award-winning works and Instituto Terra, founded by the couple Lélia Wanick and Sebastião Salgado, in 1998. best documentary category. After the exhibition of the work, director Juliano Salgado will speak with the public of the Sesi Lab Museum.

New project
Before the official opening of the Workers show, the architect of the Sebastião Salgado exhibitions, Álvaro Razuk, said that the return to Brazil of the new photographic exhibition by Sebastião Salgado in the Amazônia project, conceived by the curator of the images, Lélia Wanick Salgado, is being negotiated.

According to Álvaro Razuk, new editions of the Amazon exhibition may be scheduled for 2024 and, possibly, for November 2025, during the 30th United Nations (UN) Conference on Climate Change (COP30), in Belém.

The exhibition will display the result of seven years of photographic expeditions in the Brazilian Amazon. The photographs were taken by land, water and air and portray the transformation of the Amazon, with forest degradation and lack of protection for territories and indigenous peoples.

In 2022, the exhibition already had editions at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo, and at the Museum of Tomorrow, in Rio de Janeiro.

Workers Exhibition - Service
Period: August 26 to January 28, 2024.

Address: Sesi Lab Museum, Setor Cultural Sul, former Touring Club, next to the Plano Piloto bus station;

Hours: Tuesday to Friday, from 9 am to 6 pm; Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, from 10 am to 7 pm;

Tickets: Sesi Lab box office and online;

Ticket prices: R$ 20 (whole) and R$ 10 (half).