I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.
Interpretation
Salgado aims to inspire dialogue around societal issues through his photography.
Sebastiao Salgado's quote expresses his intention as an artist to use photography as a medium to encourage discussions about societal problems. By provoking thought and debate, he hopes to unite people in finding solutions to the issues depicted in his work, emphasizing the power of art to drive social change.
In practice
Using this quote in a gallery opening to highlight the significance of engaging with art.
I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It's very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it's there and it's not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love - all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there.
As in any person's life, there have been difficult moments: I have a son with Down's syndrome; through my photography, I have witnessed all manner of human degradation. But there have also been very happy moments.
There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won't photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.
So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence.
In the end, the only heritage we have is our planet, and I have decided to go to the most pristine places on the planet and photograph them in the most honest way I know, with my point of view, and of course it is in black and white, because it is the only thing I know how to do.
My way of photographing is my way of life. I photograph from my experience, my way of seeing things.
Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'
We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.
The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body - both go together, they can't be separated.
Do not neglect your music. It will be a companion which will sweeten many hours of life to you.
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