A life less ordinary
Even if you don’t know the name Sebastiao Salgado you are surely familiar with his indelible images. The Brazilian photographer has been documenting the world’s horrors and beauty in lush, arresting monochrome since the early 1970s.
One of his most famous series was of goldminers in the mid-80s climbing like ants in Brazil’s open Serra Pelada mines, astonishing images for both their scale and emotive, intimate detail.
He has documented the devastating human toll of famine and displacement in Africa, genocide in mid-90s Rwanda, the Gulf War oil fires and more recently, images from far-flung pockets of the unsullied natural world.
In The Salt of the Earth, veteran German filmmaker Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire), on a documentary roll since Buena Vista Social Club and the superb 3-D dance doco Pina, teams up with Salgado’s son Juliano to explore the 71-year-old photographer’s extraordinary career — and the humanitarian and environmental impetus behind his projects.
It is a fascinating adventure story. Salgado has spent his adult life as an intrepid documentarian of different cultures and of communities in trauma.
But, as narrated in English by Wenders, it is also a film about Salgado’s social and environmental conscience and his ability to find the beauty and strength in his subjects.
As Wenders explains early on, the film’s title is derived from what he already knew about Salgado from his art: that he really did care about people, the salt of the earth.
Weaving in his early life in rural Brazil, his training as an economist and his decision with wife Lelia to become a photographer while exiled in Paris during Brazil’s military dictatorship, it is a story about compassion, the burden of bearing witness, and also of hope found in unlikely places.
Wenders takes an unconventional documentary approach and eschews the usual series of talking-head interviews. Instead, he often has Salgado’s face reflected on images he is discussing, or tracking him as he works. Speaking in both French and Portuguese, Salgado reveals the stories behind the images.
The biggest revelation is how bitterly disillusioned he became in witnessing the very worst of humanity, a sense that really escalated in Rwanda and took a life-changing personal toll. It marks an interesting turning point in the film, which shifts back and forth across Salgado’s life.
It’s the moment where Salgado begins to focus his interests on the environment, exploring and documenting vast expanses of the wild with his son Juliano — whose colour footage intersperses Wenders’ and Salgado’s black-and-white.
It is also the beginning of his extraordinary reforestation project on the land he grew up on in Brazil, an amazing tale in itself.
Wenders doesn’t delve into the enormous cost Salgado’s career must have exacted on his family life, or explore in detail his relationship with Juliano, who clearly idolised his father enough to want a similar career and has spoken about his keenly felt extended absences as a child.
Also remaining on the periphery of the film is Salgado’s wife Lelia, who was his rock at home and whom he also credits with playing an enormous and supportive role in the direction of his career.
Nevertheless, the film is still very much a family affair, with Wenders’ wife Donata credited as a camera operator and stills photographer on the film.
Oscar-nominated for best documentary (Pina and Buena Vista were both nominated in the same category), Salgado’s story is the definition of a life less ordinary. For anyone interested in geopolitics and the environment, or even Salgado purely as an artist, it’s a rich and inspiring film.
The Salt of the Earth is showing at Somerville Auditorium until Sunday and at Joondalup Pines from Tuesday-March 1.
