Sebastião Salgado, the celebrated Brazilian photographer whose powerful black-and-white images captured the dignity of human labor and the fragility of the natural world, died on May 23rd, aged 81. A photographer whose work spanned the globe and crossed boundaries between photojournalism, social commentary, and environmental advocacy, Salgado’s life and career were defined by a relentless commitment to witnessing, documenting, and ultimately seeking to transform the world around him. Born in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, in 1944, Salgado’s path to photography was unconventional. Initially trained as an economist, he worked for the International Coffee Organization in London before discovering photography at the age of 27. This late start did not hinder his meteoric rise. By the 1980s, he was already renowned for his haunting images of the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil and his unflinching documentation of the human condition in places as disparate as the Sahel desert and the Rwanda genocide. His work, particularly the series “Workers” and “Exodus,” earned him global acclaim, capturing the universal struggle of laborers, migrants, and refugees. Salgado’s photo of a rain cloud over Serro do Divisor National Park in Acre in 2016. Image courtesy Instituto Terra Salgado’s early years were marked by an intense focus on human suffering and resilience, but it was his later work that would reveal his true vision for the planet. His turn toward environmentalism came in the wake of personal crises, particularly the psychological toll of photographing the human tragedies of the 1990s. He was profoundly moved by the…This article was originally published on Mongabay