The nearly 600-seat Libby Gardner Concert Hall wasn’t big enough for acclaimed documentary photographer and humanist Sebastio Salgado.
With people standing along the corridors and sitting on steps, Salgado’s Tuesday night talk was the capstone of the 24th annual Tanner Lecture on Human Values.
“When we look at Sebastio’s photos, they look back at us and make intense demands,” Dean of the College of Humanities Robert Newman said in his introduction.
The premier event of a three-day lecture series, Salgado told the crowd of more than 600 that the world he captured through his lenses was one of profound struggle and enduring survival.
“I believe we’ve come so far away from the reality of this planet…The question for me is how we can share humanity and globalization,” he said.
The Brazilian-born Salgado began his career as an economist, but quickly turned to photography to expose the strife and struggle so prevalent in the world he lived in, he said.
Traveling to more than 45 countries in the past seven years, Salgado said the backdrops of his pictures matter less than the human faces they frame.
“In Jakarta, I had the impression I was shooting in Mexico City because the problems are exactly the same,” he said.
In addition to shooting the migration of human populations from rural areas to major urban centers, Salgado also turned his camera toward the working class all over the world.
“What we have on this paradisiacal island,” Salgado said, referring to the United States, “is a lot of work made by your citizens, but just as much work from the entire planet. We really don’t realize in this country the drama that happens in other towns and cities around the world,” Salgado said.
In 2001, Salgado was appointed as a special representative to UNICEF, but long before that, he’s been concerned with environmental issues plaguing his native country.
“We have an entire planet awash in poverty and struggle, and we know so little about them,” he said.
According to Salgado, 93 percent of the rainforests along Brazil’s coastline-an area twice the size of Texas-has been eradicated in less than 14 years.
With the destruction of those rainforests would come the elimination of the ecosystem’s indigenous tribe.
“If there is not a planetary movement to save the Amazonas, in 20 to 25 years, there’ll be nothing left, and that’s terrifying,” he said.
Salgado said he uses his photos to “provoke discussion and aid understanding of the world,” but citizens in first-world countries who control the flow of capital need to open their eyes to begin balancing the scale of wealth distribution.
“The perception of the world is right here in this country, but the reality is everywhere else,” he said.
After his opening remarks, Salgado showed a brief slideshow from his works around the world, in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, China, India, Ecuador and Vietnam.
Though many of his pieces focus on the downtrodden and lower classes, he said he still has optimism that things could turn around.
“We exploit the entire planet to live as isolated individuals…It’s very complicated to have hope, but there are spots of hope around the world,” he said.
