Born in 1944 in Aimorés, Brazil. He lives and works in Paris. Having studied economics, Salgado began his career as a professional photographer in 1973 in Paris, working with photo agencies, among which Magnum Photos until 1994, when he and Lélia Wanick Salgado formed Amazonas images, created exclusively for his work.
His work appeared in press publications and books, such as Other Americas (1986), Sahel: l’homme en détresse (1986), Workers (1993), Terra (1997), Migrationsand Portraits (2000), Africa (2007), Genesis (2013). Touring exhibitions of this work continue to be presented throughout the world.
The book De ma terre à la Terre / From my land to the planet (2013) and the documentary film The Salt of the earth, (2014) by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, an account of Salgado’s life and career. A new book comes out in 2016, Kuwait, a desert on fire (Taschen), photographs taken in 1991 documenting the torched Kuwaiti oil wells, the result of the Gulf War during which the United-States-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, and Saddam Hussein’s troops retaliated with an inferno.
Sebastião Salgado has been awarded major photographic prizes. He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. In 2016, Salgado was elected member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Institut de France, and this same year, he was named Chevalier (Knight) de la Légion d’Honneur, France.
Lélia and Sebastião worked since the 1990s on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais. In 1998 they succeeded in turning this land into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra. The Instituto has as mission the reforestation, conservation, and environmental education.
