Sebastiao Salgado Quotes

I'm not an artist. An artist makes an object. Me, it's not an object, I work in history, I'm a storyteller.

It's more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera

I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.

I don't believe a person has a style. What people have is a way of photographing what is inside them. What is there comes out.

The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph.

I looked through a lens and ended up abandoning everything else.

More than ever, I feel that the human race is one. There are differences of colour, language, culture and opportunities, but people's feelings and reactions are alike. People flee wars to escape death, they migrate to improve their fortunes, they build new lives in foreign lands, they adapt to extreme hardship….

Photography is full of symbolism, it's a symbolic language. You have to be able to materialize all your thoughts in one single image.

In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.

It's not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed.

I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It's very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it's there and it's not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love - all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there.

I believe that the average person can help a lot, not by giving material goods but by participating, by being part of the discussion, by being truly concerned about what is going on in the world.

What I want is the world to remember the problems and the people I photograph. What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this. I don't want people to look at them and appreciate the light and the palate of tones. I want them to look inside and see what the pictures represent, and the kind of people I photograph.

You photograph with all your ideology.

The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate.

We are animals, born from the land with the other species. Since we've been living in cities, we've become more and more stupid, not smarter. What made us survive all these hundreds of thousands of years is our spirituality; the link to our land.

What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this.

My way of photographing is my way of life. I photograph from my experience, my way of seeing things.

I work on stories rather than individual pictures.

If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture... “If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things.

Let's build Paradise again.

So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence.

I work alone. Humans are incredible, because when you come alone, they will receive you, they accept you, they protect you, they give you all things that you need, and they teach you all things you must know. When you come with two persons or three persons, you have a group in front of them. They don't discuss with the new persons what is important to them.

I don't want anyone to appreciate the light or the palette of tones. I want my pictures to inform, to provoke discussion - and to raise money.

I have been photographing the portrait of an end of an era, as machines and computers replace human workers. What we have in these pictures is an archeology.