The ravishing The Salt of the Earth is Wim Wenders’ (Paris, Texas; Wings of Desire; Pina) documentary portrait of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, perhaps most famous for his mid-1980s shots of Brazil’s biblically vast gold mines and their workers. Now, Wenders and Salgado’s son Juliano have teamed up to tell his life story.
Wenders depicts Salgado’s world from his early years on a Brazilian farm to the start of his career, his numerous travels (he has worked in over 100 countries) and his increasingly ambitious projects, across many of the world’s most hostile zones, alongside Médecins Sans Frontières.
Notably Salgado photographed the terrible Rwandan genocide of the ’90s – after which horror he necessarily switched focus from military subjects to environmental activism instead.
Wenders’ masterful film fully exploits the supreme power of Salgado’s stunning, almost sculptural black-and-white images, which have a profound impact when viewed on the big screen. This is a moving and life-affirming tribute to a singular creative talent.
