Sebasto Seldo (Aimorés, Minas Gerais, 1944) confirms that his photographic work is the personal newspaper of the traveler or the song of hope that focuses on the strength of nature, as is appreciated in AmazonThe exhibition, which opened last February, at the National Museum of Anthropology, until the end of last week received 108,000 people.
But this photographer, who was once economical, admits this joinery Nearly three decades have been about to leave the camera.
“Look, until 1996, I photographed only one animal: the human being. But this animal disappointed me deeply, so I fell ill, I left the picture and returned to Brazil, to the place of my parents, where they inherited the land they had.
“Hasinda was great, although I remembered that, when I was a child, more than half of the tropical forest was, with all the animals you imagined. But when that happened to us, I had already less than two percent of the forest. Everything was destroyed, although it hadn’t happened only in Hasinda for my father, but in all that area that I used to build modern Brazil and the exciting Brazil that left behind.
“Then, we took that land and my wife had an idea: reformulating that forest that was before.” This is how the Genesis was born, “a program with which we tried to reformulate this part of the forest, which we made by planting three million trees to this day; it is the largest environmental project in Brazil,” says the Prince Prize in Astoria Arts 1998.
How did the Genesis project affect your mood?Sebastio salgado slap. “What I can say is that when we started this project, I was a hopeless person from him, I was depressed and sick, but when we planted trees, life returned tremendously to that place … Then I went back to life and wanted to travel on the planet to see what I was still not terrible (because of our gender).
From that moment on, Saljado canceled his photographic team and went to the Amazon and in about thirty countries to photograph animals, trees and landscapes.
“Before that, I believed in human species. But since then, I know that this type continues without hope for himself, because it is scheduled to end. However, I discovered the types of ants, elephants, turtles and trees, which is important like me, anything great!” , He says.
How many times have the Amazon traveled? “I have made 58 flights to the Amazon to do so that you see here (at the exhibition Amazon, That will be closed on May 4). So you need to go and feel great respect for these areas.
“You have to read and persuade your body and your soul that this will be the place of your life for many years, because it will become part of your life.”
Have you ever had these trips? “I have two operations in one knee, another one in Achilles tendon, I have a problem with the column and everything due to the accidents, because I fell several times, but I wanted to go, I wanted to see, I wanted to live, I wanted to meet.
“If you have gone to those places, you will tell what I saw, but my way to get the camera. I started this more than 50 years ago, today I have 82, but I started filming in 27 years. Let’s say that I started to age because I was an economist giving up everything and turned into a photographer.”
How do you describe the transformation of the Amazon in the last century? “It was a brutal transformation, because we feel the inclusion of the Earth and leave the land to industrial agriculture, which uses toxins and produced in the Mass to earn money and we lose the culture of those who are displaced.
“This happens, but there is still part of the indigenous population there, although we have already lost 18 percent of the Amazon.
“At the present time, we have groups of indigenous population in Amazon Jungle 102 that have not been contacted before. It is pre -human history, which lives within this forest that our consumption community is destroying,” regrets.
History of dreams
Sebastio Salgado says that, since a person dreams of pictures, he gave him nights a fictional world.
“Hey, as I traveled throughout my life, to more than 130 different countries, I have seen awesome and wonderful things. So, this created a special world of imagination, so I have no moment (at night) when I don’t dream.
“For example, I dream that I am photographing it, but sometimes they reached my difficult moments, because I imagine that the camera does not work, and that the movie did not enter, did not suffer and suffer. But I also have moments when I take the most beautiful pictures in the world.
Finally, the Brazilian photographer regrets what happened with the Oaxaka mix, the universe he first met in the 1980s.
“However, in the late 1990s, I returned to Mexico to conduct a history of migration in Latin America” and discovered that many societies had migrated to the vicinity of Mexico, and lost its root.
Juan Carlos Talafira
(Tagstotranslate) Sebastião Salgado (T) Photographer (T) Amazonia
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