Sebastiao Salgado 1944 - 2025

Like many, hearing of Sebastião Salgado’s death has met with both sadness but also recognition of the universal impact that his work had, and will continue to have, across the world, and not just within the photographic community. It also brings back how much his work meant to me personally.

As a young photographer, unsure of direction, I came across his images of the gold mine at Serra Pelada. They were unlike anything I’d seen - thousands of men etched into the earth, both monumental and intimate, biblical scenes. Staggering not just in scale, but in feeling. The same was true of his photographs from Kuwait (I remember vividly in the exceptional Sunday Times Magazine of the late eighties), Rwanda, the Sahel.

He didn’t just show what happened, he stayed long enough for something deeper to emerge. In Workers, he elevated the everyday. In Exodus, he gave presence to the displaced. And in Genesis, he turned to the stillness of the natural world—showing that wonder and devastation could be held in the same frame.

His work taught me that photography could be more than observation. Salgado showed generations of photographers what it means to bear witness. To stay with the story. To believe that the world, even in its darkest moments, is still worth seeing—fully and clearly. His images remain, as does his example. And for that, many of us will always be grateful.