For anyone that has ever dreamed of travelling the world as a photographer, The Salt of the Earth is the pinnacle exhibition of that sentiment. Übermensch Wim Wenders directs and narrates an exposé of Sebastião Salgado's 40-year career as photojournalist, artist and ethnographer. Salgado's black and white photographs, taken in South America, Africa and Central Europe provide us an opportunity to accompany him on a journey, as he describes it, "to witness the human condition." The photographs are a beautiful, stark reminder of man as a beastly animal, cruel in his tyranny over the land and others. The photos from the Serra Palada gold mine in Brazil, my personal favourites, are astonishing in their magnitude, exposing man as both ant and God. Wenders' film is a stunning revelation of Salgado's works and requires your full intellectual and emotional intelligence to appreciate what you can.
Review of The Salt of the Earth
