The vast tail of a Southern right whale, photographed near Argentina in 2004.

Ask photojournalists to name a peer they admire, and Sebastião Salgado’s name is sure to crop up. The Brazilian is renowned for the long-term projects he undertakes, devoting years at a time to documenting the story of a particular people or the evolution of a certain place. Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photographyAs he describes in the talk he gave at TED2013, his attention to detail and his personal attachment to his subjects caused health problems that nearly killed him.

Thankfully, he didn’t give up. His most recent project is Genesis, which he describes as “my love letter to the planet” and for which he spent eight years traveling the world to photograph humans, animals and nature in their native glory. (To read more details about Salgado’s process, see this rather lovely Q&A with TED photographer Ryan Lash.) The resulting black-and-white images include the astonishing shot, above, of a Southern right whale, which he photographed in the Valdés Peninsula in Argentina in 2004. Together, the series forms the focus of a book (including a vast, two-volume edition that costs $9,000 and comes complete with a wooden stand designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando; mere mortals can pick up a hardcover version for $69.99). There’s also a documentary, Shade and Light, filmed by Salgado’s son and Wim Wenders, and exhibitions in cities around the world.

The scale is appropriate. This is truly breathtaking work. And, for all that the scenes Salgado captures will likely feel alien to most of us, the images are imbued with no less than the spirit of humanity. If that sounds overblown, seriously, check these out:

An iceberg photographed on the Antarctic Peninsula. Note the “castle tower,” at top right, apparently carved in the ice by wind erosion. (2005.)

Waura Indians fish in the Puilanga Lake near their village in the Upper Xingu region of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state. (2005.)

The Mursi and the Surma women in Ethiopia are, Salgado says, the last women in the world to wear lip plates. It’s unclear precisely why or how this custom evolved, but it is a mark of women of high birth. (2007.)

Teureum is the leader of the Mentawai clan, which lives on Siberut Island in West Sumatra. The shaman is preparing a filter for sago. (2008.)

Women of the Zo’é village of Towari Ypy in Brazil. (2009.)

Look, ma! No hands! Salgado photographed these chinstrap penguins on icebergs between the Zavodovski and Visokoi islands in the South Sandwich Islands, near Antarctica. (2009.)

Shot from Navajo Native American territory, this breathtaking image captures the junction of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, at the gateway to the Grand Canyon National Park, in Arizona in the United States. (2010.)

Light streams across an elephant disappearing into the bush. Kafue National Park, Zambia. (2010.)

The Nenet people, living deep within the Yamal peninsula in Siberia, inside the Arctic Circle. (2011.)

Sebastião Salgado: The silent drama of photography

I have so many questions — I’m a great admirer of your work. But let me begin with: why photography?

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’t 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.

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.

You started as a social activist before you were a photographer. Is that how you think of yourself still — as an activist?

No, I don’t believe that I’m 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’s my way of life, photography.

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?

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’t have this identification, you won’t stay with it.

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’s 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. 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.

When I did another body of work, Migrations, I saw that a reorganization of all production systems was going on around the planet. We have my country, Brazil, that’s 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.

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.

My last project is Genesis. I started an environmental project in Brazil with my wife. We become so close to nature, we had such a huge pleasure in seeing trees growing there — to see birds coming, insects coming, mammals coming, life coming all around me. And I discovered one of the most fascinating things of our planet — nature.

I had an idea to do this for what I think will be my last project. I’ve become old — I’m 69 years old, close to 70. I had an idea to go and have a look at the planet and try to understand through this process — through pictures — the landscapes and how alive they are. To understand the vegetation of the planet, the trees; to understand the other animals, and to photograph us from the beginning, when we lived in equilibrium with nature. I organized a project, an eight-year project, to photograph Genesis. I talked about how you have to have identification for a project — you cannot hold on for eight years if you are not in love with the things that you are doing. That’s my life in photography.

When you do these large projects, how do you know when it is finished?

Well, I organize these projects like a guideline for a film — I write a project. For the start of Genesis, I did two years of research. When this project started to come into my mind, I started to look around more and more and, in a month, I knew 80% of the places that I’d be going and the way that we’d be organizing it. We needed to have organization for this kind of thing, so I organized a kind of unified structure. I organized a big group of magazines, foundations, companies, that all put money in this project. And that’s because it’s an expensive project — I was spending more than $1.5 million per year to photograph these things, to organize expeditions and many different things. And then I started the project. I changed a few things in between, but the base of the project was there.

Given the changes in digital media, if you were to start a new project now, do you think you’d still go through photography? Or would you try something different?

I would go to photography. One thing that is important is that you don’t just go to photography because you like photography. If you believe that you are a photographer, you must have some tools — without them it would be very complicated — and those tools are anthropology, sociology, economics, politics. These things you must learn a little bit and situate yourself inside the society that you live in, in order for your photography to become a real language of your society. This is the story that you are living. This is the most important thing.

In my moment, I live my moment. I’m older now, but young photographers must live their moment — this moment here — and stand in this society and look deeply at the striking points of this society. These pictures will become important because it’s not just pictures that are important — it’s important that you are in the moment of your society that your pictures show. If you understand this, there is no limit for you. I believe that is the point. As easy as this, and as complicated as this.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Sebastião Salgado has worked as a professional photographer since 1973. And he arrives on the TED stage with extraordinary gentleness and humility. He doesn’t think everyone is necessarily familiar with his work, so he starts by showing some of his incredible pictures, and we watch in silence. The images make for powerful, often difficult viewing. It’s clear that Salgado has traveled the world and shot the stories of so many people who are not regularly given a face. The pictures seem other-worldly; so beautifully staged and shot that it’s difficult to remember that this is real; this is photojournalism.

He starts by telling us some of his story, of being born on a farm in Brazil in 1944. It was a paradise, he says, of more than 50% rain forest that supported some 35 families. They ate everything they produced and were almost entirely self-sufficient. He left the farm when he was 15 years old, to move to the big city to start secondary school and another life, learning about politics and radicalism, becoming a “leftist,” studying to become an economist and, most important, meeting his “best friend all my life long,” Lelia Wanick, later to become Lelia Wanick Salgado, his wife and his companion to this day.

Politics intervened. A rapidly industrializing Brazil became unstable and an untenable place in which to live, and so the Salgados moved to France. It was there that at the age of 30, Sebastião discovered photography, the discipline that was to become his passion, his life. “I lived totally inside photography, doing long term projects.” He shows the audience another series of pictures that are epic in scale. Again we watch, in silence.

In the 1990s, Salgado photographed Migrations, traveling around the world to document just some of the many millions of people who have been uprooted from their homes by poverty, wars and repression. He saw deaths by the thousand–and the work took its toll. He became physically ill himself. Yet when he went to see a doctor, he found out that he wasn’t sick at all.  ”He says ‘You are not sick. What happened was you saw much death, you are dying. You must stop. Stop!’” Salgado agreed. He returned to his home in Brazil–and to the farm on which he had grown  up.

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

He began shooting the project, known as Genesis, back in 2004, shooting through to 2009. And while he may have focused on documenting nature, people and humanity are still central themes, as he photographed tribes and people who live far from the so-called advances of the modern world. He shows us some of these images too (below). The ethereal, otherworldly beauty of the black-and-white shots is again extraordinary.

The Antarctic Peninsula. 2005. Iceberg between Paulet Island and the South Shetland Islands on the Antarctic Channel. At sea level, earlier flotation levels are clearly visible where the ice has been polished by the ocean’s constant movement. High above, a shape resembling a castle tower has been carved by wind erosion and detached pieces of ice. Courtesy Taschen.

Salgado is here with a call to arms. We must rebuild our forests, he says, just as he has done on his family’s land in Brazil. The destruction of the rainforest, of redwood trees in California, is unacceptable. It is simply the only way to capture carbon, to create the oxygen the planet needs to survive and thrive. Salgado makes a comparison: if you have a lot of hair, it might take two or three hours to dry your hair. “Me?” he says drily, stroking his bald head. “One minute.” It’s a funny moment, but he’s making a serious point. “The trees are the hair of the planet,” he says.

Brazil. 2005. In the Upper Xingu region of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, a group of Waura Indians fish in the Puilanga Lake near their village. The Upper Xingu Basin is home to an ethnically-diverse population, with the 2,500 inhabitants of 13 villages speaking languages with distinct Carib, Tupi and Arawak roots. While they occupy different territories and preserve their own cultural identities, they co-exist in peace. Courtesy Taschen.

The photographer concludes by showing some breathtaking before-and-after pictures of his farm in Brazil. We see the erosion, the dried soil, the arid landscape of the home to which he returned. And then we see a shot from two months ago, with the forest almost entirely retored. They haven’t managed to plant all the needed 2.5 million trees yet, but two million are planted, with the resulting sequestration 100,000 tons of carbon. It’s an uplifting end to a sobering talk.

An exhibition of 250 images from “Genesis” premieres at the Natural History Museum in London in April, before touring to Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, and Paris. 

The speakers who appeared this session. Click their name to read a recap of their talk:

Photographer Sebastião Salgado captures the dignity of the dispossessed through large-scale, years-long projects.

Longtime TED favorite Edith Widder, an expert on marine luminosity and underwater cameras, will talk about the hunt for the giant squid.

Camille Seaman photographs big ice and big clouds, giving them personality.

Stuart Firestein teaches students and “citizen scientists” that ignorance is far more important to discovery than knowledge.

Saskia Sassen is the world’s go-to theorist on our complex and vibrant cities.

Beardyman, “ruler of beats and destroyer of dance floors,” is developing a real-time music-production system that places live looping at the center of a new musical paradigm.

Taking a cue from his own artistic journey, Phil Hansen challenges us to spark our creativity by thinking inside the box.