![\"SebastiaoSalgado_QA\"](\"http:\/\/tedconfblog.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/sebastiaosalgado_qa.jpg?w=900\")
By Ryan Lash<\/b><\/p>\n By Ryan Lash<\/b><\/p>\n
I\u2019ll never forget the first images of Sebasti\u00e3o Salgado\u2019s that I ever saw. At the time, I was just getting into photography, and his images of the mines of Serra Pelada struck me as otherworldly, possessing a power that I had never seen in a photo before (or, if I\u2019m honest, since). I have so many questions — I\u2019m a great admirer of your work. But let me begin with: why photography?<\/b><\/p>\n Photography came into my life when I was 29 — very late. When I finally began to take photographs, I discovered that photography is an incredible language. It was possible to move with my camera and capture with my camera, and to communicate with images. It was a language that didn\u2019t need any translation because photography can be read in many languages. I can write in photography — and you can read it in China, in Canada, in Brazil, anywhere.<\/p>\n Photography allowed me to see anything that I wished to see on this planet. Anything that hurts my heart, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that makes me happy, I want to see it and to photograph it. Anything that I think is beautiful enough to show, I show it. Photography became my life.<\/p>\n You started as a social activist before you were a photographer. Is that how you think of yourself still — as an activist?<\/b><\/p>\n No, I don\u2019t believe that I\u2019m an activist photographer. I was, when I was young, an activist — a leftist. I was a Marxist, very concerned for everything, and politics — activism — for me was very important. But when I started photography, it was quite a different thing. I did not make pictures just because I was an activist or because it was necessary to denounce something, I made pictures because it was my life, in the sense that it was how I expressed what was in my mind — my ideology, my ethics — through the language of photography. For me, it is much more than activism. It\u2019s my way of life, photography.<\/p>\n You do these very large, long-term projects. Can we talk a bit about your process at the beginning of a project? How do you conceive of it? How do you build it in your mind before you start?<\/b><\/p>\n You know, before you do this kind of project, you must have a huge identification with the subject, because the project is going to be a very big part of your life. If you don\u2019t have this identification, you won\u2019t stay with it.<\/p>\n When I did workers, I did workers because for me, for many years, workers were the reason that I was active politically. I did studies of Marxism, and the base of Marxism is the working class. I saw that we were arriving at the end of the first big industrial revolution, where the role of the worker inside that model was changed. And I saw in this moment that many things would be changed in the worker\u2019s world. And I made a decision to pay homage to the working class. And the name of my body of work was Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age<\/i><\/a>. Because they were becoming like archaeology; it was photographs of something that was disappearing, and that for me was very motivating. So that was my identification, and it was a pleasure to do this work. But I was conscious that the majority of the things that were photographed were also ending.<\/p>\n When I did another body of work, Migrations<\/i><\/a>, I saw that a reorganization of all production systems was going on around the planet. We have my country, Brazil, that\u2019s gone from an agricultural country to a huge industrial country — really huge. A few years ago, the most important export products were coffee and sugar. Today, they are cars and planes. When I was photographing the workers, I was looking at how this process of industrialization was modifying all the organizations of the human family.<\/p>\n Now we have incredible migrations. In Brazil, in 40 years, we have gone from a 92% rural population to, today, more than 93% urban population. In India today, more than 50% of the population is an urban population. That was close to 5%, 30 years ago. China, Japan … For many years of my life, I was a migrant. Then after that, I became a refugee. This is a story that was my story. I had a huge identification with it and I wanted for many years to do it.<\/p>\n![\"Sebasti\u00e3o](\"http:\/\/images.ted.com\/images\/ted\/14f8e8189a9921e6d3bf2a5e363bf56a02763174_240x180.jpg\")
Sebasti\u00e3o Salgado: The silent drama of photography<\/span><\/a>In the twenty years that I\u2019ve been photographing, his work has remained the benchmark of excellence. So it was with great trepidation that I sat down with him at TED2013, where he gave the talk “The silent drama of photography<\/a>,” for a short interview. After all, what does one ask of the master?<\/p>\n
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