Friday, February 05, 2016

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado: 'The Salt of the Earth' (2014)

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's documentary The Salt of the Earth (2014) focuses on the life and lens of Brazilian Sebastião Salgado, a total immersion photographer, including major projects, such as the awe-inspiring Instituto Terra reforestation effort, with Lélia Wanick Salgado. 
To deepen and widen the scope of his (or their) major photography projects, Salgado (and companions, from time to time) has traveled to the Ends of the Earth, the Far Corners of the World, from vast areas with no human habitation to locales filled with refugees of famine and war, or workers laboring as if from the dawn of time in mines (as above), from ancient peoples living half-hidden from modern economic systems, to migrants and nomads on the Edge of Tomorrow. 
The Salt of the Earth delivers a stunning blend of documentary film and photography in both color and black and white. Images range from disturbing atrocities (people dead from starvation or massacre) to mystic beauty, from social panorama to natural vista.
Whereas most photographers tend to focus on either natural or social settings, Sebastião Salgado does both, without privileging one kind over the other: to me, this is an optimal way of looking at the world, with very impressive results.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

1 comment:

Charles Gramlich said...

Some of these folks have gone through incredible efforts to get their pics.