I can’t find my copy of Sebastião Salgado’s An Uncertain Grace. Went searching for it this morning. In doing so, I realized I hadn’t picked it up in years.
One should never go too long without looking at this book. It should not have taken the death of Salgado to remind me of this fact.
This book is perfect in every way, from the poetic title one wishes they could steal, to the essay by Fred Ritchin, which helps make sense of the images. Images one wishes they could also steal. Images that are magical while remaining firmly grounded on the planet we all share, and yet located in a world few of us have ever seen.
How is that possible?
Most photographers of a certain style, when asked to name the body of work that influenced them the most, immediately name Robert Frank’s The Americans. This is a fine, albeit predictable, answer.
Frank made pictures equally grounded and also removed from our shared world. The difference is that none of us wants to live in his world. It’s a sad, hopeless place populated by people who have lost their collective soul. Salgado’s world is the opposite. The hardship is still there, but it’s offset by grace. Grace, uncertain as it may appear, changes everything. Grace is hope, even when humanity’s best efforts fail.
Being photographers who managed to make the leap into the art world is about the only thing these two masters have in common. Beyond that, every aspect of their professional and personal lives was the opposite.
Unlike Frank, instead of blaming the downtrodden, Salgado celebrates them.
Salgado created a body of work that captures humanity’s systemic failures—the result of vain, greedy, unsuccessful economic, diplomatic, and environmental policies that our intellectual superiors fostered on the lesser humans (and animals) who live here. His work is an indictment of the ruling class, a body of work which was, ironically, awarded, sometimes funded, and will continue to be collected by these same people.
That’s photographic judo, using one’s opponent’s strength against them. The only hope of the underdog.
Salgado stood out not just for his intelligence, photographic talent, and kindness, but for his unwavering devotion to his mission.
Most photographers pick up a camera in their teens, first because it’s cool, then as a vehicle to showcase their creativity and cleverness. Sebastião began his career relatively late and was driven to showcase others. It takes most of us (equally smart and kind photographic protégés) a decade or so to realize we’re not the center of our own work. Sebastião already knew this at the beginning and thus was miles ahead of everyone else.
In the late 1980s—bear with me, I’m going from memory here—Sebastião had an exhibition at the 92nd Street YMCA on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was an International Center of Photography (ICP) show, before Cornell Capa, the founder of ICP and Robert Frank’s younger brother, had their space in Midtown. Naturally, Robert Pledge, the co-founder of Contact Press Images, being at the center of the photojournalism world then, had a lot to do with it (along with Contact’s Aaron Schindler). Cornell relied heavily on Pledge and Pledge relied heavily upon Schindler.
The show was magnificent, the kind of event where everyone in the photographic universe, regardless of discipline, attended the opening. I seem to remember there was work from both An Uncertain Grace and Workers in the show, although the latter wouldn’t be published for a couple of years. To my young eyes, the show was mind-blowing. To the eyes of the art world, it was less so. Ingrid Sischy, writing perhaps in Artforum or The New Yorker, claimed the work was, in short, too good. Because of its painterly qualities, beautiful composition, and “lush beauty,” it could “reinforce our passivity” toward this tragedy.
Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times would echo these opinions years later when Salgado’s Workers came out. Susan Sontag wasn’t a fan either.
Salgado was thirty-seven, very early in his photographic career, when he made images of Ronald Reagan being shot.
He was on assignment for The New York Times Magazine under Peter Howe, doing a story on the first 100 days of Reagan’s presidency. He was shooting color—unlike him—and an assigned photo essay, also not like him, when the shooting happened. Salgado’s agency, Magnum, immediately requested, and Peter agreed, to release him from the assignment. This allowed Magnum to market the images worldwide. (Something that would never happen today—another essay.) I think the first call his agency made was to Newsweek, where Guy Cooper agreed to pay $70,000 just for the first look (with an option to license) the images.
These images allowed him to pursue his real work. Ironically, the images were, for their journalistic and roughness, the most Robert Frank-like of his career (despite the color).
Windfall or not, he wisely remained frugal, rolling his own Tri-X from fifty-foot bulk rolls. He’d finance his photographic epics by licensing the periodical publishing rights in advance to magazines worldwide. In America, these rights usually went to Life, where Peter Howe was now the Director of Photography.
His legacy lives on. He is a true inspiration to all photographers.
Grace, unfailing, and filled with hope, regardless of human weakness, define his work. It proves that when it comes to communicating the human condition in artwork (yes, I said it), beauty often wins over ugliness. To see our Creator mirrored in the faces of His creations, as it were, instead of the opposite.
Sebastião is survived by his wife, Lélia, and his sons, Juliano and Rodrigo. This is his true legacy.
As I write this, on the ninth anniversary of my father’s death, know this to be true.
Beautiful.