Sebastiao Salgado (1944-2025) PHOTOGRAPHER WHO CAPTURED DIVERSITY OF LIFE MAKES FINAL 'CLICK'

The great Brazilian documentary photographer Sebastiao Salgado died on May 23, 2025 at age 81. After Mexico's Manuel Alvarez Bravo (1902-2002), he's the best known Latin American and third world photographer to achieved worldwide recognition.

- By Gamini Akmeemana

Photographers do not become household names like film actors. Whether they are art photographers, photojournalists or fashion photographers, some achieve fame within specific cultures and markets. In this context, Western photographers have headed the list because the West has dominated the global dissemination of information, art, culture, music and much else for two centuries or more.

If we take an example from Europe, Hungarian-born Robert Capa (an assumed name) became well-known for his Spanish Civil War photographs in the late 1930s, and his active career ended in Vietnam when he was killed by a landmine. Dmitri Baltermants (1912-1990) was a Soviet photojournalist famous for his coverage of the Eastern Front from 1941-45. But the nature of their societies and those organisations they worked for meant that Capa got more international exposure and travel/work opportunities. Arguably, he's better known than Baltamants because of these factors, not because he was a better photographer than the latter.

Marketability a crucial factor