Epic stories

Damien Demolder pays tribute to the legendary photographer Sebastião Salgado - a man who drew attention to the injustice and suffering of the world's poor through his astonishing style and patience

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The renowned documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado has died at the age of 81 from leukaemia and complications from a bout of malaria he contracted in Indonesia in 2010. He died on Friday 23 May 2025.

Well known for his large-scale and long-term projects highlighting the plight of threatened cultures, environments and people, Salgado approached his subjects with a deep humanity that was reflected in images that conveyed a powerful connection with the viewer. Always working in black & white, first with film and then with a digital camera, Salgado and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado created books, prints and touring exhibitions of his work to ensure the message could be imparted to as wide an audience as possible. Salgado’s dedication to a story, his compassion and the years he spent exploring each subject afforded his work such extraordinary depth that he was able to show the previously unseen and unnoticed; and the dramatic style he used to make his images caught the attention of the world's picture editors and their readers. He is survived by his wife and their two sons, Juliano and Rodrigo.