Salt of the Earth is a remarkable documentary of the life and work of Sebastião Salgado, the Brazilian phtotodocumentarian. The film was written and directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, Sebastião’s son, and was an Academy Award nominee this year.
Salgado spent most of his life photographing the range of miseries experienced by those in disastrous situations, usually resulting from poverty or war — hence the title. His projects included studies of workers around the world, starvation in Ethiopia, migrations and exiles from war or drought areas and the Sahel, among others. His work is both devastating and beautiful, and the accumulation of tragedy and its tension with the beauty is extraordinarily powerful. Makes it understandable why in the last couple of decades he turned both to nature photography — the earth unscarred by its most dangerous animals, humans — and a project co-led with his wife Leila of rainforest restoration, Instituto Terra, around his childhood home in Brazil.
His story, his partnership with Leila, his journey from World Bank economist to photographer to conservationist is fascinating, but the heart of the movie is his photographs, the places he accessed, the connections he made, and the beauty with which he captured such terrifying situations.
Do see it!