Original subtitles

- Art Subs - Tribute to Sebasti�o Salgado

A film about life from a photographer?

Perhaps I should start by remembering the origin of this word.

In Greek, 'fas' means light,

and 'graf�' means to write, to design.

A photographer is, literally, someone who draws with light.

Someone who draws the world with lights and shadows.

Serra Pelada, a gold mine in Brazil,

in front of me.

When I reached the edge this huge hole

all the hair on my body they bristled.

I had never seen nothing like that.

In fractions of a second, I saw it pass before me

the history of humanity.

The history of construction of the pyramids,

from the Tower of Babel,

of King Solomon's mines.

There was not the slightest noise of machines in there.

What was only heard

it was the murmur of 50 thousand people inside a huge hole.

Conversations, noise, human noise,

mixed with manual labor.

It seemed to have returned to the beginning of time.

I could almost hear the murmur of gold in these souls.

That land needed be completely removed.

Not everything was gold.

They needed to climb all this to leave.

First by small stairs, then big stairs,

until you get to the top.

And be careful not to fall.

Falling, it would take others with it.

Climb these stairs several times a day,

but it never crossed my mind to fall,

because no one hunts.

We weren't there to fall and yes for carrying bags

or take photos, in my case.

They climbed all this about 50 or 60 times a day.

The only way to get down such a slope,

It's running.

If you try to stop, you fall.

This whole crowd was a world extremely organized.

However, in total revelry.

It gives the impression that they are slaves.

But there wasn't there a single slave.

The slavery that could exist it was the desire to get rich.

Everyone wanted to get rich.

There were all kinds of people,

intellectuals, people with a university degree,

farm employees,

workers of civil construction.

Everyone taking their chances.

Because when you found out a lode of gold

everyone who participated that piece of mine

had the right to choose a bag.

And in the chosen bag for that person

it was slavery in fact.

The bag could contain nothing or contain one kilogram of gold.

The much-desired independence was disputed at that time.

Every man who felt 'gold fever'

never get rid of it.

I discovered this photo in a gallery,

for more than 20 years.

I didn't know who had taken it.

I imagined the person was both a great photographer

and an adventurer.

Behind the photo there was a stamp and a signature:

Sebastião Salgado.

I bought the copy.

The seller took it from a drawer more photos by the same photographer.

What I saw it moved me deeply,

especially this image.

The portrait of a Tuareg woman, blind.

She still leaves me moved and I see her every day.

Well, it's on my desk since then.

One thing I soon realized about Sebastião Salgado,

that he really cared with people.

This is important to me.

After all, people are the salt of the Earth.

We ended up meeting

and talking about his life,

of your work

and about the origin of it all.

SALT OF THE EARTH

SALT OF THE EARTH

SALT OF THE EARTH

If you gather

several photographers in the same place,

each one will take different photos.

This is because, of course,

they come from different locations, very different.

Each develops the way of seeing

depending on its history.

I think in my story,

I learned to develop my way of seeing, here,

in this place.

Here, I have an ideal of the planet.

I took long walks on foot together with my father,

through these mountains,

and we came here to watch.

Behind each of these mountains

there is a story, there is something to be seen.

I dreamed a lot, standing here.

I wanted to go beyond of these mountains,

I wanted to find out.

A JOURNEY WITH SEBASTIÃO SALGADO

WEST PAPUAN RANGE OF RANGE INDONSIA, YALI VILLAGE, 2011

This was Sebastião Salgado.

Sebastian father.

He bequeathed the name to his only son

that even becoming an active traveler all his life

took advantage of the studies that his father forced him to study,

in a way that this father never would have imagined.

Economic studies allowed him to understand

global market, of commerce and industry.

That's why he knew what made the world go round.

It all started in little Aimor�s,

on the border of Minas Gerais with Holy Spirit.

There was his father's farm,

under a huge sky, between the Atlantic forest and the river,

in navigable season.

And there were the trains...

charging non-stop, iron ore

from Minas Gerais to the rest of the world.

It was and is, after all, one of the greatest mining zones on the planet.

That's where Sebastião grew up. Only child, with seven sisters.

What a beautiful life!

During summers,

played on the banks of the Rio Doce.

In Rio Doce...

That's where we are now.

And also, our small team of filming.

Sebastião, stay there.

I just learned something...

It's worse to film a photographer

than anyone else.

It's not just not to be quiet and do what you want,

as, by professional tic, react and respond

using your preferred weapon: the camera.

And he always responds by shooting.

- Wim, I took a beautiful photo of you. - Me too, but I don't show it.

I can only imagine!

In this case, He didn't just photograph me...

There were two of us in your framework.

The other, my colleague in the direction,

was his eldest son, Julian.

With your camera, he had already

accompanied by his father on several trips,

such as Papua New Guinea, seen before in this film.

Or here, on a remote island

in the north of the East Siberian Sea.

How would you like to have gone with them.

Hence, they invited me to participate of the rest of the documentary,

I think to have an external view of the adventure.

I didn't hesitate for a second.

What more could I ask for?

Finally, I could meet that man,

discover your motivations

and the reason why his work

had made such an impact on me.

Little did I know What would I discover in him?

much more than a simple photographer.

Sebastião was 15 years old

when you caught the train and left his little town.

He was going to college in Victoria,

capital of the neighboring state.

At first, the young man didn't even know what it was like to have money in your pocket.

He had never paid anything.

The farm produced everything they needed.

I didn't have the courage to enter a restaurant

and starved the first weeks in the capital.

We are in the dark

about what would become of Sebastian

If this young woman hadn't appeared in the frame.

Lilia.

I was 17 years old, studying music and she was incredibly beautiful.

It was love at first sight.

When he got a scholarship

to study the master's degree in economics from USP,

they moved in and got married.

It was the 1960s.

Both military in leftist movements,

just like other students in Paris, Berlin or Chicago.

Brazil was commanded by a brutal dictatorship

and they were at risk daily of being arrested,

tortured and deported.

In August 1969,

Sebasti�o and L�lia leave Brazil

embarking for France.

As he continued his economics studies,

Lúlia studied architecture.

One fine day, she bought a camera

for her work.

And who had fun with the machine It was Sebastian.

The first photo, obviously, It was from Lúlia.

Then he got a job in the Organization

International Coffee

and they moved to London.

He intended to make a career at the World Bank

and always went to Africa

to work in development projects.

I took Lúlia's machine

and always came back bringing lots of photos.

By understanding that these photographs

gave him much more pleasure that economic reports,

they both took a bold decision.

He would take a huge risk

of abandoning the promising economist career

to start over from scratch.

They returned to Paris and invested what they had

in expensive photographic equipment.

For a while, Sebastião tried photographing sports,

took portraits, did weddings and even naked,

before finding the vocation you have.

Niger, 1973

These are my first photos.

We were in Tahoua.

There were young mothers in line

to receive food,

because there was a great drought in Nigeria in 1973.

For L�lia it was more difficult because she was pregnant.

I remember once that we were there,

staying at a friend's house, in Niamey,

The Marabout of Niamey approached.

L�lia was wearing shorts and she was very attractive.

He came close, sat down,

and said to Lúlia:

"Get out of there, come sit here, in my lap!"

I spoke:

"Mr marabout, we have a small problem.

"This woman is pregnant with...

our first child. "

"Then it's better If she stays here..."

And he understood... the lack of...

of synchronization of the moment.

And, well...

In the end, we talked so much that he took 1kg of sugar

and went away, so happy, as if he had taken Lúlia.

The son Juliano was born in Paris in 1974.

There's my future colleague and co-director.

Young mother,

L�lia continued to support Sebastião, full of desire.

Along with studies, worked

and publicize the work of Sebastião where he could,

magazines, newspapers and agencies.

After a few relevant publications,

they plucked up courage to start

the first big own photographic project:

"Other Americas"

Sebastian would travel all of South America.

Little Juliano got used to with his father's great absences.

OTHER AMERICAS 1977- 1984

Since we left Brazil, in 1969,

I missed you a lot of Latin America.

I made the decision to travel

by countries neighboring Brazil.

Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia...

And I dreamed a lot of meeting the mountains of Latin America.

The Andes.

At that time, there were profound social unrest

of Liberation Theology.

On this trip I met in Ecuador a young priest

named Gabicho.

We were almost the same age.

I was a young photographer, and he, young priest.

He was the one taking the word of God

and organized the peasants in cooperatives,

spreading solidarity.

And how he possessed

this whole community at your fingertips,

I was able to travel impressive.

Here, we were over 3,000 meters high.

Sometimes we go up to 600, 700 meters in a single day.

But I enjoyed it immensely life in this landscape

and in these communities.

These are the saraguros,

an indigenous group from southern Ecuador.

Very Catholic, but also great drinkers.

More than half of the community, on weekends,

whether men or women,

they were completely drunk.

The peasant on the left

her name was Lupe, from Guadeloupe.

Lupe became a very good friend of mine.

At that time, I had long hair,

light hair, very long.

He had a long beard, redhead, fair.

Walking together through the mountains,

One day he approached and said: "Look, Sebastian,

I know you He is sent from heaven. "

Because according to a legend of the saraguros,

the gods, in the image of Christ,

returned to Earth to see them, to observe them

and choose which ones deserved or not go to Heaven.

Walking these trails, he told me about his life.

I was sure I was someone coming there to watch them

and count up there if they were behaving.

I have never encountered in my life an entire people living

in another rhythm of time like this.

I had the impression that I had passed a hundred years there

because everything was so... slow...

It was another way of thinking, another speed.

On their faces there was fatalism.

This is in the State of Oaxaca, in Mexico.

It's a group of peasants known as mixes.

Everything is medieval, the plow... All...

It was deep Latin America.

They are a country people.

The most important thing for them

it was the music.

They loved music.

Every member of the community who knew how to play something

I didn't need to work.

He worked as a musician.

They let me sleep there, a few days,

in a cement warehouse, very cold.

It was a test to see if I really wanted to stay.

How I managed, for a long time,

they took me out of there and took me for a house and...

I integrated myself more into the community.

It ended up being great.

We became friends

and lived in harmony with the community.

Here is north of Mexico, are the Tarahumaras.

They are great runners, They are sprinters.

Their walk is running.

God, it was hell following them.

They didn't walk, they flew.

This is a Tarahumara.

Your face is well marked, well lived.

And beautiful hair, fantastic hair.

There were those who approached from the camera

giving the impression that I had a sound recorder.

They told me things

like I'm recording what they said.

The strength of the portrait, It's just that in that fraction of a second

we understand a little about life of the person photographed.

The eyes count a lot, the expression on the face too.

When taking a portrait It's not just you who takes the photo,

the person offers you the photo.

This trip was so important for me.

Back, after years without being able to set foot in my country

and being able to be here.

In essence it was the same.

It was my continent, we are so close.

'Other Americas' meant 8 years of work by Sebastião.

On these trips to the heart of Latin America,

he disappeared for long periods of time.

Juliano grew up, having an absent father.

Parents could send and receive letters, at least.

At the time there was no satellite communication.

Every time he came back to see the family

and edit photos together with L�lia,

in the eyes of the son, Sebastian appeared

as the great adventurer.

A super hero, much more than the photographer.

And... Cut!

Cut to me.

Here I am, 30 years later,

when I traveled with my father for the first time.

We were in Wrangel,

a desert island, in the Arctic Ocean.

Sebastião wanted to photograph

the last big meeting of walruses

and I wanted to find out what my real father was like.

During that trip,

finally, I would hang out with the photographer

and with the adventurer.

Damn bear!

We are his prey.

Unbelievable! The bear scared them all into the water.

What are you thinking about?

What are you thinking about, dad?

Thinking I don't know.

It's going to be complicated to make this story.

If that's the good thing...?

�... There's a difference that the bear is close.

You can make a bear. Photos of a bear, close up.

But when the picture is not good,

you have a bear document,

but you don't have no photo of the bear.

Here the location is not good.

There's nothing behind. There's nothing for it,

I don't know... to compose the photo, to help with the painting.

There is no action! There's nothing.

Impressive!

I saw a time inside the lens, I only saw the teeth coming out.

You didn't understand the head photo.

Impressive, right?

It gave the impression of being in Dante's hell,

Only teeth showing

with those shapes. Amazing!

My baby brother would never be able to go to school.

I would never learn to read or writing like me.

Rodrigo would be isolated in a world

of which never we would share.

It was very hard for my parents.

But then something happened that changed everything.

Thanks to his love,

Rodrigo developed a language of its own.

Slowly,

little by little we learn to decipher

his emotional alphabet,

communicating without words.

Shortly afterwards, my mother, my brother and I caught

a plane to Brazil.

The dictatorship had collapsed. I was 5 years old.

I didn't realize the importance of that trip.

At a given moment, a man opened the blind

and the light of day flooded the aircraft.

His voice echoed through the cabin:

"We are flying over Brazil!"

My mother rushed to open hers and look.

But she was silent.

There was so much time that she didn't see her country.

It was a moment of so much joy,

but when she turned to me... she was crying.

As for my father,

he was in French Guiana and he would meet us later.

It was December 31st and I returned to Brazil.

It was fantastic being able to return to my homeland,

after 10 and a half years away.

It was scary.

Lilia didn't recognize the Victory he had left.

The urbanization of Vitória had changed. Everything was changed.

My neighborhood had changed a lot.

I found my parents again.

When I left them they were still young and strong.

When I came back, I found them elderly.

My father, already very old.

At this moment I wanted

see Brazil more deeply.

My sister lent me a car

and traveled for 6 months across northeastern Brazil.

I didn't know the northeast,

but he had always dreamed of meeting.

Brazil 1981-1983

I found these people going to have a funeral.

I left the car on the side of the road and followed them.

Infant mortality it was very high

in northeastern Brazil.

These are children who died before baptism.

People believe that when they are not baptized...

have no right to paradise.

They will stay in the intermediate region, called 'limbo'.

If a child dies with eyes closed

because she was baptized by the divine.

If the eyes were open...

are left like this so that they can find the way.

Otherwise, they will wander for eternity.

At that time, coffins were rented from the church.

It was much cheaper to rent them.

The same coffin could be used dozens of times.

Here, you can see well the coffin rental service.

Yes, they are shoes, for sure.

Everything was sold: shoes, coffins, bananas, vegetables...

popsicles, everything.

It's a part of the world where...

death and life are very, very close.

Here, a group saying prayers

and also political work at the same time.

We had in Brazil and we continue to have...

a big movement of landless peasants.

Most movements of the landless have their origins here.

They were born here, in northeastern Brazil.

They are people...

of a moral... force,

a physical force...

Even though they are fragile... due to lack of food.

Look at the aridity of the region. It's very arid.

That's right... there's a part of the Sahel in Brazil.

And there, on the road...

people leave to never return.

Sometimes the earth remains so dry, so difficult...

that people emigrate to nowhere and from there to the south.

And the place ends. They abandon the land.

Salgado Family Farm Minas Gerais, Brazil

Since I arrived in Brazil, My grandfather's lands are like that.

Dry and arid.

When Sebastião returned to the farm,

after traveling through northeastern Brazil,

the place was no longer paradise whom he had known in his youth.

But he had something else in mind.

The suffering he had witnessed

had transformed him.

Your role as photographer had acquired a new meaning.

We understand the urgency which forced him to travel.

He missed him very much, but he understood.

SAHEL, THE MAN IN AGONY 1984- 1986

For your next project,

that would take him to the Sahel, in Africa,

Sebastião joined to 'Doctors Without Borders'.

Ethiopia, 1984

I worked in Ethiopia in 1984.

And then I continued throughout the Sahel, 1985, 1986...

In total, I spent almost 2 years followed in this region,

making a report about hunger.

There was a refugee camp,

the greatest in history of humanity, until then.

I had a crazy urge to show those photos.

To demonstrate that there was a large portion of humanity

living a huge martyrdom.

And arising from a problem sharing

and not from a natural catastrophe.

It was a Coptic region.

The people of northern Ethiopia are strongly Christian,

of enormous humility.

Unable, even with a child about to die,

to impose yourself on someone.

They prefer to wait.

Look at their condition, in this field.

In this situation, no one lasts a long time.

It is said that in such a field hunger killed X people

due to physical fatigue.

But it is diseases that kill.

When you get cholera, we dehydrate so quickly

which is lost up to 12 liters of liquid per day with diarrhea.

You die in two or three days.

Faces so young

and so old by suffering.

If you take a good look at her face You will see that it is not old age.

What gives her that look? It's the empty eyes.

Look how young she is. See her baby,

and her husband.

Most deaths It was at night, because of the cold.

Over here, die, It's like everyday life.

People get used to with death.

A husband washing his wife to bury her.

He wears mountain clothes made with goat skin.

It was another very young woman.

According to Coptic tradition,

the body must be clean for the encounter with God.

It must be washed completely, even if...

water is scarce.

Every person who dies It's a piece of the world that dies.

A father prepares his son for burial,

Say your last goodbye to him.

It's usually the family who prepares his dead.

And know that the government withhold food

and didn't let them arrive to the population,

how it happened there,

in this field north of Ethiopia.

A political dishonesty brutal.

TIGRAY REGION ETIPHIA, 1984

I returned to Ethiopia at the end of 1984.

The guerrillas had realized that the government was plundering the region

and began to remove people to Sudan.

They left from the entire Tigray region.

There was an attack of 2 helicopters.

Mi-24s are helicopters very fast combat

and they shot people with machine guns.

I took a photo and ran.

Many pregnant women walking

with the hope that upon arrival, find food, water...

Finally, the promised land.

I must have passed there

at least another 2 months.

And when I arrived in Sudan...

I saw a lot of these people working.

This man came from Ethiopia.

Your camel must have been at its limit or dead,

But he insisted, insisted...

When he reached the doctors the child was dead.

After having walked so much.

This MSF camp was being dismantled.

Water is primordial in these camps

and had become a big problem.

So it was necessary to move it, as quickly as possible.

They were huddled together in UN trucks

to be taken to a new camp

with a good land, very fertile,

on the bank of the Blue Nile.

I traveled about 300 to 400km in these trucks.

Two friends in the back of the truck.

They continued as if it were on any given Sunday afternoon...

sitting under a tree, telling stories.

There was a lot of water. It is on the bank of the Nile.

But it was here that people died

why...

there was nothing to eat.

They reached their final martyrdom.

They forgot or couldn't bring food to the refugees.

There was disorganization with groceries.

Those who said they would take, "Yes, yes, yes..."

When they arrived, they didn't bring anything.

MALI, 1985

I ended up in Mali.

There was also a great drought there.

People's skin was like tree bark.

trees that suffered with sandstorms,

followed by sandstorms.

There were only women and children.

The men had gone to work in Libya

or down to Ivory Coast looking for work,

or emigrated with the promise to return

and bring food to the family.

But very few returned.

They were not unguarded,

because MSF had done a huge job.

He had brought great resources It's the region.

This is my friend Luke, a Belgian doctor.

Is measuring and weighing the child.

These children after 15, 20 days

were unrecognizable, recovered their health.

A little marked for the rest of your life...

due to lack of nutrients during growth.

This child was alone.

He carried it in his hand a small guitar.

He wore rags from a shirt

and had no pants, nor anything else.

But notice how much determination in your posture.

It's someone who knew where to go.

In search of other groups, of a village

with your dog.

A little man of 8, 9 years old.

Sebastião became attached

To the people of the Sahel region.

He went back there countless times.

photographs of him, the book and the exhibition,

organized by L�lia,

led to public opinion to question yourself

about the real causes of this catastrophe.

Sebastian later changed to a theme, to which he dedicated

another 6 years and countless trips to almost 30 countries.

WORKERS 1986-1991

The 3rd great photo book - designed together with L�lia.

I wanted to surrender a kind of tribute

to all men and women who built our world.

The archeology of the industrial age.

Sebasti�o and L�lia researched in depth

and meticulously prepared the project.

And then Sebastião traveled across the 4 corners of the world.

Photographed metal workers in the Soviet Union.

Lived with ship breakers in Bangladesh.

She sailed with fishermen of Galicia and Sicily.

Showed the production of cars in Calcutta.

Observed tea farmers in Rwanda,

country I had already visited as an economist.

This time, his mission was different.

His perspective had changed, but he was still driven...

for the same empathy with the human condition.

In each chapter from "Workers"...

Sebastian submerged deeply

in each specific field of manufacturing.

Like the weeks that passed

with the miners from Serra Pelada.

In 1991, at the end of the 1st Gulf War...

Do you remember? Iraqi troops they withdrew

and Saddam Hussein set fire to hundreds of oil wells.

An army of firefighters from all over the world

reaches the oil fields in flames.

Sebastião forced himself to go too,

encouraged by curiosity for this explosive profession.

KUWAIT, 1991

When seeing the first images on TV...

came the desire to do this report.

It was like working in a big theater.

500 wells burning with fire.

A scenario on an enormous scale, the size of the planet.

Nothing controlled us, we could go wherever we wanted.

There were emissions of dense petroleum smoke.

Smoke so impenetrable that the sunlight did not pass through.

There were days...

that were night for 24 hours straight.

After the fire went out,

the ground still remained very much, but very hot.

It was necessary to throw a lot of water to cool it down.

Otherwise, the temperature it was high enough

to light the oil again.

And yet, sometimes,

there were explosions that looked like cannons.

The noise was deafening.

It was like working close to the turbine of an airplane.

Today I'm a little deaf.

My deafness started there.

They are Canadians.

From the Fire Department from Calgary.

They had brought a beautiful red truck

and followed a rule.

After fighting the fire,

washed the truck every night.

And in the morning, the truck was again covered in oil.

A hell of a job!

I postponed my departure at least 2 or 3 times,

But the time eventually came.

However... It was a pain in the heart

abandon Such a gigantic spectacle.

We went in that direction,

and very close to the end...

we pass on of a long wall...

On that day, there was a journalist there

from the New York Times.

As this was no man's land, the war had destroyed everything,

we broke the gate.

As we enter,

we found a kind of...

paradise...

turned into hell!

It was a kind of garden of the Kuwaiti royal family.

With thoroughbred horses

who had gone crazy, desperately crazy.

Animals are the first escaping a catastrophe

when they are free to escape.

But they were trapped there.

We found birds inside because it was an oasis.

Everything was very well irrigated.

Birds couldn't fly because the feathers were stuck together.

The Kuwaitis fled when I feel the catastrophe coming.

They left behind the animals locked up, and also

the Bedouins, whom they do not cherish

as human beings.

"Workers" managed to unite economist Sebastião Salgado

to the artist in whom he had transformed.

The photos were published in the best magazines,

the exhibition traveled the world

and the book was published in multiple languages.

But Sebastião and Lúlia They didn't stop there.

Soon afterwards, started working

in a new great stage of photographic reports.

They noticed that a burning issue of our time

it was the displacement of entire populations

due to wars, hunger and the rules of the global market.

Thus, while Europe closed its borders,

Sebastião decided to focus the fate of the excluded.

With L�lia, they began to research and make plans

and again it came from her the creative impulse

for the new chapter of life, which they called "exodus".

�XODO 1993- 1999

The book tries to awaken the world consciousness

about everyday life of all these refugees,

from India, Vietnam, Philippines...

from Latin America, Palestine, Iraq...

and many other places.

But Sebastião always returned to the continent

that captured his imagination, since always.

Africa.

TANZANIA, 1994

I was putting together my project of population displacement,

in 1994.

That's when the president of Rwanda...

The plane he was on had been shot down.

This started a huge population displacement

to Tanzania, because it resulted

in brutal repression against the Tutsi people in Rwanda.

This time, I was one of the first to arrive.

It was a widespread catastrophe.

Some fled to Burundi,

others to Congo and for Uganda...

They fled wherever they could.

The roads were already full of people.

People who slept at the side of the road

carrying all belongings on bicycles.

People ran away with what they could.

We continue in the opposite direction of this escape.

We headed towards the border.

There were no security guards, there was nothing.

When I entered Rwanda it was terrifying.

The number of deaths... that I found on that road.

A grenade had exploded.

Those who didn't die from the grenade they were murdered by faction.

It was there that I understood the dimension...

the magnitude of the catastrophe who was testifying.

It was genocide what happened in that country.

It took about 150km to arrive on the outskirts of Kigali.

There were 150km of bodies.

I returned there because my work dealt with the populations.

I was making a book about refugees.

He worked on the "exodus".

So, I entered the camps

and I started to see

the volume of people who left Rwanda.

The hell that broke out in paradise.

It was something terrifying

see such a beautiful savannah

transformed into a mega city.

Within a few days, there was almost a million people.

In the midst of all this anguish something touched me very much.

He went to see this mother with her son.

And the son's trust in this mother.

Yugoslavia, 1994- 1945

The violence

and the brutality...

are not the monopoly

of foreigners, in distant countries.

They are here, 'next to home' within Europe,

in the former Yugoslavia.

Something extremely shocking.

A bus coming from Krajina passed through Croatia...

One person was killed through that hole there.

The Croats killed a lot of people who was fleeing from Krajina.

A widespread violence, That's what hurts the most.

It was sad to see,

how contagious is hate, he understands?

These have seen what violence is.

Entire families.

The entire Serbian population da Krajina was expelled.

So, suddenly,

people were expelled from their homes,

Looking for a place to go.

With the 'front neighbor shooting at you'.

In this refugee camp near Tuzla,

in Central Bosnia,

They are families that were from Zepa, from the Zepa enclave,

where the Serbs murdered thousands of young men.

We were there at the time in which the families arrived

and settled in.

They were in a state of enormous bitterness.

There were only women, elderly people

and children.

The youngest men had been separated

and murdered, one by one.

And the strange thing is that this happens in Europe,

exactly at the end of the 20th century.

And here, by the cars, if you see that it was people

who had a certain level of life, a European level.

A European intellectual level.

A European infrastructure.

And they lost it all.

Hundreds of kilometers full of people and cars.

We are a very ferocious animal.

We humans, we are a terrible animal.

Whether in Europe or in Africa,

in Latin America, everywhere.

We are extremely violent, in truth.

Our story It is a story of wars.

It's a story that has no end.

A history of repression, a story... sick.

Congo, 1994

The situation in Rwanda it kept getting worse.

The Hutu army who was in power, lost,

and retreated to the Congo, to the Goma region.

Before it had been the Tutsi who had to flee

of Hutu barbarity.

Then it was the Hutu who fled

with the resumption by the Tutsi.

Therefore, they both fled.

In a few days, in early July 1994,

the Goma region received more than two million people.

It was installed there a real catastrophe.

Diseases such as cholera began to spread

and the people they began to die like flies.

12 to 15,000 people died per day.

I took photos of piles of dead like these.

I saw this man arrive with the son in his arms

to throw it onto the stack.

Then he left, talking to the friend next door,

as if nothing had happened.

It was not possible bury people.

So they brought tractors of the French army

who collected the bodies in heaps, in dozens,

they spread them across the floor...

and covered it with earth.

The whole world you should see these photos

to see how monstrous It is the human species.

They are orphaned children found on the road.

Of these three children,

the two with the brightest eyes survived.

What has a sad look was dying.

When leaving there, I was sick.

Very sick. My body got sick.

It was not an infectious disease, but...

my soul was sick.

I returned to Rwanda a year after the catastrophe.

To cover the return of the Hutus who were in Congo

and they had nowhere else to go.

The United Nations began to force them to return to Rwanda.

Rwanda, 1995

It gave the impression that the entire planet

was covered by refugee tents.

When I finished my work here,

the Tutsi authorities proposed that I would see

some places where repression had happened.

Here people took refuge in a church

they thought was safe.

They were all murdered.

This scene is from a school.

The blackboard has preserved what was written

at the moment it happened.

It was terrifying.

Congo, 1997

That population who fled Rwanda,

around 2 million people,

a part of her returned home.

But many were terrified of repression.

A batch of 250,000 of them

left the city of Goma and went to the Congo jungle.

And there they were lost. It was known that there were 250 thousand.

They disappeared, no one knew where they were.

Six months later,

they started to appear, near Kisangani,

in central Congo.

They had stayed in the jungle for 6 months.

Here, the UN High Commissioner is taking me to the place.

There was a train and I went for it.

The train would carry supplies and would return,

but I said: "I'm staying."

I spent three days with them.

They kept coming,

in waves and waves, endless.

When you think they were 250,000 at the start

and only 40,000 arrived...

210,000 people were missing that disappeared.

And in parallel, life went on.

A barber, cutting hair...

There was even a Congolese

with a calculator.

He collected the measly dollars that people had,

the little currency they have and he doing the exchange.

In the middle of nowhere. In a forest isolated from everything.

At a given moment,

the Kisangani guerrilla, who was pro-Tutsi,

began to make them return.

Back to where they came from.

It would be another 6 months to return to Rwanda.

The guerrilla began to kill some of them.

That's when I saw people arrive to the extreme of existence.

They began to go into delirium,

they lost their heads, in fact.

They became crazy.

In the end, these people were expelled.

They were never heard from again.

I sincerely believe who were all murdered.

That was my last trip, a sad adventure in Rwanda.

Get out of there...

without believing in anything anymore.

I thought there was no way out for the human species.

Humans were not supposed to survive to something like that.

We no longer deserve to live.

Nobody deserved it.

I dropped the cameras several times to cry for what I saw.

Sebastian had disappeared in the world of shadows.

I questioned deeply work as a social photographer

and his role as a witness of the human condition.

After Rwanda, would it make sense to do something more?

At that time, my grandfather's health worsened.

My parents needed return to Brazil

to take care of the farm.

But it was a lost land.

There were no more birds,

nor alligators, nor the majestic forest,

nor the wonders that were part

of childhood memories by Sebastian.

And then, Lúlia had a surprising idea.

"Why not replant the forest that was there before?"

The forest that was here and covered all these hills

it was the Atlantic Forest,

the tropical forest of the Atlantic.

No one had tried yet replant it.

The more, around 600 hectares.

Lúlia's suggestion may have been born of your will

to give new life to the family.

But they rolled up their sleeves

and during the following 10 years

what happened in this space it was an authentic miracle

who converted in the so-called “Instituto Terra”.

I remember that at the beginning of the plantation,

Sometimes, at night, I dreamed that everything had died.

Because the land was so hideous, everything was so run down,

that I asked myself: "Will it work?"

In general, there are in the Atlantic Forest 400 different species.

Of course we didn't have 400 species,

but each time, we planted 100, 150 species...

From the first plantation, we lost 60%.

From the second, around 40%.

There were no books saying

how to replant an Atlantic Forest.

I really like coming here

to see all these trees together.

When you see all this mass of vegetation

you have an idea of ​​the effort that was it.

When I was little,

there was a small waterfall here.

All year round There was water running in this little waterfall.

With my sisters, we walked, picnic here.

The forest was very thick at the time.

And then,

when we cut down the forest, the water disappeared.

For now, our forest is young and uses a lot of water.

But in 10 or 15 years, when everything stabilizes,

when growth stabilizes,

I'm sure there will be again a beautiful waterfall here.

You can see that there is...

many trails.

Hundreds of trails.

These are cow trails.

With each step of the cow on the ground, within the footprint perimeter,

there is a charge on the ground 200, 250 kilos.

The soil becomes compacted, loses water,

and nothing can sprout there.

Here it is interesting to observe the difference.

What was Instituto Terra like? a smooth pasture like that,

and now it's a recovered ecosystem,

with two million trees planted.

Here we see

a cicada who sang until he died.

She didn't jam her body in the tree.

These are termite deposits that are involving her.

Little by little, will be buried here.

Sometimes we admire the trees for its height, for its beauty,

but it all depends on them, our water, our oxygen...

It is the home of the entire world.

Ants, small insects, cicadas...

Everyone is in the trees.

It's nice to catch a tree that you planted.

Here she is, very strong, very resistant.

30 years from now, she will be thick like that.

For now, she is young, will still grow.

Look, here are the very small ones.

Maybe they sprouted last night,

like Alice, entering Wonderland.

The most incredible thing that will become a 40 or 50 meter tree

and live 400 or 500 years.

There is enormous power here.

To think that you are here is 3 months old

and they will be adults at 400 years old...

Maybe from here, can be measured

the concept of eternity.

Maybe eternity is measurable.

At first, we thought: "Let's plant a forest."

It was just a seed, then just a little plant.

And now, it's not just a little plant, There are thousands, millions.

And it's not just here.

It's all around here and even further.

That's what's wonderful. A simple idea...

She...

It can evolve, it can grow.

And it will no longer be someone's idea, but from everyone.

This method can be applied anywhere.

Of course, species are not always the same.

But the way to do it is the same.

In all tropical forests.

The earth was the cure

for the lack of hope by Sebastian.

The joy of seeing the trees growing

and the water fountains returning

revived his vocation for photography.

But the family knew which could not be like before.

We have reached the conclusion

what should be a new photographic project,

linked to the environment.

Of course the first idea to emerge

was to denounce the destruction of forests,

ocean pollution, etc.

But, little by little, we started to think

to do a different project.

We will pay tribute to the planet.

And to our surprise, we discovered

that almost half the planet

continues to be as on the day of Genesis.

GENESIS 2004- 2013

Several friends told me so I don't get involved in this.

"It's very risky.

"You are known as a human, social photographer.

"Go on the field from the photographers...

of landscapes, of animals. "

I said: "It's okay, let's do it.

I can learn photographing that too. "

I started, and the first story...

I wanted it to be Galápagos.

I wanted to understand what Darwin had understood.

The same species,

in ecosystems very different,

have evolved so very different.

Looking at this detail of the iguana's paw

I can't stop thinking

in the hand of a warrior from the middle ages,

covered in metal plates to protect yourself.

Looking at the structure of this hand,

I can see that the iguana She's also my cousin.

That we both came from the same cell.

When we are in front of such an elderly being

we are in front of an authority.

With all these wrinkles, all this knowledge.

Without a doubt, when Darwin was here

This turtle was already an adult.

She may have seen Darwin. Who knows?

I remember once, I was very tired

because I had walked in a lava field,

for a long time.

I was lying on the beach...

and I felt something touching my leg.

I looked and saw that it was a sea lion.

Soon another came install yourself on the other side.

And in the end, We were three sea lions.

They didn't see me as a predator, as a threat.

It was my first report about nature,

the first time that I photographed other animals.

For 8 years, I took my time to look,

until you understand the most important:

I am nature, as much as a turtle, a tree,

or a stone.

The incredible thing is how he looks for us.

Well, yeah...

It has depth in its look.

He came close, I was taking the photo...

He put his finger in his mouth

and saw himself for the first time.

By lens flare.

He took his finger out and put it in,

until I was sure it was himself that he was seeing.

He was recognizing the image itself.

I felt completely identified with him.

It's a family just like ours.

Grandparents, parents and grandchildren.

And they respect each other.

When you go to them, you need to be...

polite, introduce yourself, in a certain way.

Show respect through their territory.

And from then on, you are accepted.

I managed to become friends also of a whale.

They were whales in...

Argentina.

As an adult, it measures 35 meters and it weighs about 40 tons.

She approached, she came to the boat.

I could touch her, you know.

And it's incredible... the sensitivity of her skin.

When I caressed her,

saw the tail 35m away, she was shaking.

A phenomenal sensitivity.

The vessel was about 7 meters long.

She knew that if she forced she would capsize our boat.

But never once did she touch on the boat, not once.

When we moved away a little she beat her tail.

She seems from another world, It's unbelievable.

I'll see if I have it here another photo of the Nenets.

See, everything a nenet has is here.

It's his house.

This report with the Nenet people I prepared for a long time.

There were 18 people with around 6 thousand reindeer

who lived in permanent migration.

Here it must be around 7:00 pm.

Around 8:00 p.m., they light the fire

and do the only hot meal of the day.

After eating, they talk a little, they discuss.

And the fire is put out.

With a fire burning inside, the temperature is 15 to 20°C.

It's very pleasant.

Two hours later, it goes to -30°C.

They are the real ones Siberian cowboys.

Always carry the ropes around the neck,

made with reindeer hair.

Wear boots of silver fox fur.

They sleep with boots on. A boot lasts a lifetime.

The Ob is a special river.

It is a huge river in Siberia.

There he measures about 47 km wide.

Above the Ob, you enter in the Arctic Circle.

There is no more horizon line, there is nothing.

You find yourself on a board, white, the size of the universe.

Genesis made Sebastian travel the world again,

for almost a decade.

He wanted to show us nature,

animals, places and people,

who remained as at the beginning of time.

A much more optimistic view from the same planet

that Sebastião had seen before, injured and destroyed.

'Genesis' would end up being his masterpiece.

A love letter to the planet.

There were representations of the Zo'�

in Jesuit scriptures, from the 16th century.

They came to the Amazon and reported about a people

that used a kind of tube on the lower lip.

Such Indians, were never seen again.

Everyone thought which was a fable,

an invention of the Jesuits.

That was until the end of the 80s,

when they were finally contacted.

STATE OF PAR�, BRAZIL Tribo Zo'�, 2009

These Indians live in paradise.

It's the only place I've seen in my life

where women have 3, 4 or 5 husbands.

And the husbands... There are the same number of women.

A woman has a hunter husband,

a fisherman husband,

a husband who works a little on the plantation,

a husband close to home to help with the rest...

Women have enormous power.

They have a domain on part of men

which is quite big.

Something I always thought interesting,

in all these people,

is that people have

a complete conscience of the image itself.

When I was going to take a photo,

and that the person knew

that I would represent her in image,

She was interested at first, and then, no more,

because it wasn't her world.

But they were very interested by my knife.

My friend Yp� made me swear that I would give him my knife.

But the person responsible for FUNAI

made me promise

that I wouldn't give no object to the Indians

to protect a little their purity.

Yp� offered me a deal.

"The day you leave,

you will throw the knife through the plane window. "

"I will follow the path of the plane

and I will find the knife. "

The man, whose photographs they told us

several stories of life on our planet,

share with us a great project and a dream:

The destruction of nature can be reversed.

Thousands of water sources they started watering again

the "Instituto Terra".

2.5 million trees have already been planted.

The fauna returned, including jaguars.

The area is no longer owned by the Salgado family,

It is a national park and belongs to everyone.

It is a model of how devastated lands wherever you are,

can become forests again.

- Art Subs - 6 years of making Art for you!

Caption -Hawkeye147-

Caption - Spa -

Caption - Durenkian -

Review - Durenkian -

Like us on Facebook: facebook. com/ArtSubs