There was something almost mystical about the way Sebastião Salgado held his camera. Not like a tool, but like a prayer—an instrument of communion between the seen and unseen worlds that shape our collective humanity. When the legendary Brazilian photographer died the world lost not just a documenter of our times, but a prophet of possibility, a man who spent five decades proving that, even in our darkest moments, “all futures are still possible”.
Salgado was born in 1944, in Aimorés, Brazil—600 km north of Rio de Janeiro and 150km inland from the Atlantic Ocean—and studied economics at the University of São Paulo, earning a master’s degree in 1968. While working as an economist for the Ministry of Finance in São Paulo, he joined the popular movement against Brazil’s military government. Seen as a political radical, he was exiled in August 1969 and fled with his wife and lifelong collaborator Lélia Wanick to France, where he continued his studies at the University of Paris, earning a PhD in economics in 1971.
While working subsequently for the International Coffee Organisation in London, Salgado made frequent trips to Africa where he first started taking photographs seriously. By 1973, he had abandoned economics entirely to become a freelance photographer, working at first with the agencies Sygma and Gamma before joining Magnum Photos in 1979. By the 1980s, his ambitious, self-funded projects had made him perhaps the most influential documentary photographer since Henri Cartier-Bresson. He went on to receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, be named a Unicef Goodwill Ambassador, and win numerous awards including the W. Eugene Smith Grant and the Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal.
A world builder before the term existed
What made Salgado’s work break through to global audiences was his revolutionary approach to scale and narrative. His early work documenting famine in the Sahel region (in 1984 and 1985), and workers across Latin America established his signature, but his understanding that transformation requires total immersion changed everything. Workers (1986-93) took seven years across continents. Migrations (1993-99) consumed six years, during which he documented the stories of 40 million displaced people. These were not photography projects—they were cultural phenomena that redefined documentary practice.
Salgado was the ultimate world builder before the term existed. Where others captured moments, he captured civilisations—six years documenting migrants for Exodus (1993-99), eight years in pristine wilderness for Genesis (2005-13, a record of human and animal life across the globe), seven years immersed in Amazônia (2011-19). His breakthrough insight was that transformation in society requires total immersion. His exhibitions became pilgrimages, his books sacred objects, his gallery spaces somewhere for the global élite to confront the consequences of systems they helped to create.
Salgado pioneered multimedia storytelling as environmental activism. His projects were not merely photography exhibitions, but complete worlds combining travelling shows, coffee-table books, educational programmes, and direct funding for environmental restoration. His revolutionary 2022 NFT project Tree of Life with Sotheby’s—a one-of-one non-fungible token accompanied by a mural-sized archival pigment print—launched during a period of intense global criticism of digital assets, channelled all proceeds to Instituto Terra’s reforestation efforts. Art planted trees just as technology served nature.
This holistic vision drew Salgado to FORMS—a global network of futures-oriented museums spanning six continents, spearheaded in 2019 by the Museum of Tomorrow, in Rio de Janeiro, under Ricardo Piquet’s leadership. The FORMS mission is inspired by a disruptive insight from Piquet’s daughter Marina, contained in her master’s degree in museology. “What if museums made imagining possible futures their primary mission?” This is radical thinking indeed given traditional museums’ focus on preserving the past and interpreting the present.
Through FORMS, Sebastião recognised kindred spirits in the worldbuilding approach of Genesis 3.0—a platform I run weaving art, science, and regenerative economics—which was invited into the FORMS community. Like Sebastião’s travelling installations and other projects, which fund his Instituto Terra, Genesis 3.0 operates as a cultural ecosystem: combining digital art experiences, physical exhibitions and environmental action to fund regenerative projects.
I first met Salgado in Berlin in 2022, at Futurium, a home to the possibilities of thinking about the future, as part of the FORMS festival. He spoke about the Amazon’s crisis—while still exhausted from launching his pioneering NFT project. I was moved to tears. Not from the devastating beauty Salgado showed us in his work, but because he reminded me so powerfully of my grandfather, a man who had taken me hiking through the Carpathian Mountains and taught me that our purpose is to leave this world more beautiful than we found it. Salgado had the same gentle face, the same eyes sparkling when speaking of nature’s majesty.
Salgado had discovered his sense of the global coexistence between all species, so powerfully represented in his masterwork Genesis, through what he described as a seismic inner transformation. “I did eight years of trips, eight months a year,” he said. “But the big trip was inside myself. I discovered that I am part of all this, part of the animals. We are part of everything alive on the planet.” This shattered his previous assumptions: “I thought I was part of the only rational species. That’s a big lie. Each species is deeply rational inside its own species.”
A rural family ranch revived
Salgado’s greatest masterpiece was not captured in silver halide—it lived in soil. When he and Lélia inherited his family’s degraded ranch, at Aimorés, “the land was as sick as I was,” he wrote, “everything was destroyed”. “Only 0.5% was covered in trees.” Then came Lélia’s revelation: replant the forest. That work started in 1999. “When we began,” Salgado said, “all the insects and birds and fish returned and, thanks to this increase of trees, I too was reborn—this was the most important moment.”
Behind each of Salgado’s frames was Lélia Wanick Salgado, his wife and creative partner of 61 years, the architect and set designer who transformed his vision into monumental volumes and gallery exhibitions that became sacred pilgrimages for admirers of his work. Their publications, exhibitions, and street shows transcended the art world, reaching an audience well beyond that of other photographers. Together they raised two sons: Juliano, now leading Instituto Terra, and Rodrigo, whose Down syndrome never dimmed his artistic spirit. The numbers tell their story: 700 hectares of Atlantic Forest restored. 2.7 million trees planted. Living proof that destruction can be reversed, that faith can regrow forests.
Salgado with his wife and creative partner Lélia Wanick Salgado. She has been responsible for the curation and planning of Sebastião Salgado’s multi-year projects as books, photography and multimedia exhibitions Independent Photo Agency Srl / Alamy Stock Photo
His journey from despair to faith represents a profound transformation. “I did not believe in anything,” he said, after witnessing Rwanda’s genocide in 1994 “I did not believe in the salvation of the human race. I had seen so much brutality.” But instead of surrendering to darkness, he chose illumination: “I thought the only way to give us incentive, to bring hope, is to show pictures of the pristine planet—to see the innocence.”
‘I never photograph the misery’
Salgado faced criticism throughout his career. Critics accused him of aestheticising suffering, creating an “aesthetic of misery.” His response was unwavering: “I never, I never, photograph the misery.” Instead, he photographed dignity in adversity, humanity’s resilience amid destruction. “Art is not decoration,” he declared. “Art is transformation.” This distinguished him from purely documentary approaches, positioning his work as a bridge between artistic beauty and social consciousness.
This made him more than a photographer. It made him a spiritual warrior, wielding beauty, empathy, and conviction that seeing clearly leads to acting rightly. His black-and-white images weren’t just aesthetic choices—they were moral statements, stripping away distraction to reveal essential truths about our shared humanity.
In his final months, completing the Amazônia tour, he was working to co-create a platform for COP30, the United Nations climate change conference—for Brazilian artists and Indigenous communities united for climate justice in his homeland. We were preparing to bring his Amazônia exhibition to the Museu da Amazônia, at Manaus, where our joint COP30 event will take place.
Sebastião Salgado believed every photograph contained infinite possibility, that every moment of true seeing could spark transformation. He spent his life helping us see clearly—beauty and brokenness, resilience and fragility, the invisible threads connecting every human story to life’s larger story. He was cremated in Paris, but his final journey will be to the forests of Instituto Terra in Aimorés, where his ashes will be scattered among the trees he and Lélia planted.
The Salgado story continues: in every tree growing at Instituto Terra, in every artist joining his cultural ecosystem, in every museum becoming a portal to possible futures. Here, where Sebastião proved forests can be reborn, his heirs will prototype how human creativity and natural wisdom can dance together in harmony.
In the end, perhaps that was always his greatest photograph—not any single image, but the entire composition of a life dedicated to proving that even in our darkest hour, transformation remains possible. All futures are still possible. Sebastião Salgado spent his life proving that.
Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior; born Aimorés, Minas Gerais, Brazil 8 February 1944; married 1967 Lélia Wanick (two sons); died Paris 23 May 2025
- Susanna Barla is the co-founder and managing partner of Creators Fund venture studio and fund, which develops arts & tech startups including Genesis 3.0, an art and science platform connecting artists, scientists and designers with cultural institutions. She is a member of the FORMS network of future-oriented museums, which plans to honour Salgado’s legacy at COP30 in Belém, Brazil (10-21 November 2025).