Brazilian-born, Sebastião Salgado, one of the world’s greatest documentary photo-journalist has died at the age of 81. His amazing vivd black and white images of hardship, conflict and natural beauty, captured in 130 countries over 55 years, chronicling major global events such as the Rwanda genocide in 1994, burning oilfields at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and the famine in Sahel region of Africa in 1984. Instituo Terra, the environmental organisation he founded with his wife Leila Wanick Salgado, said in a statement “ His lens revealed the world and its contradictions, his life, the power of transformative action”. His striking pictures of Brazil’s showing thousands of desperate figures working in open-cast gold mines and indigenous people of the Amazon.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazilian President said about Salgado “one of the best photographers the world has given us”. The Amazonia exhibition was displayed at the Science Museum in London and the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester in 2021 and 2022.

Born in 1944, Salgado left a career in economics to start as a photographer in 1973 and worked on international assignments for a variety of photography agencies before forming his own, Amazonas Images with Leila in 1994. He won the Prince of Asturias Award and recognition as a Unicef Goodwill Ambassador.