ABSTRACT
De´tresse (1986), Other Americas (1986), An Uncertain Grace (1990), Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age (1993), and The Children: Refugees and Migrants and its companion volume, Migrations (2000). An Uncertain Grace is a powerful anthology of the force of Salgado’s images. Here there are the mesmerizing photographs of laborers in the mammoth gold mines of Serra Pelada, Brazil, wending their muddied way up and down this vast cavity in the earth like legions of humanoid ants. There are the wrenching scenes of skeletal poverty in the Sahel. There is the resolute trekking of bowler-hatted Indian women and their children across mountain-bordered meadows. The Children chronicles the plight of refugee
children from across the world, in portraits that show the ravages inflicted by ethnic cleansing, political instability, war, and extreme poverty. An exhibition sponsored by the United Nations traveled around the United States. Salgado has been the recipient of numerous awards
from around the world. Nonetheless, critics have maintained that he overdramatizes the lives of the unfortunate. He has responded thus to this criticism:
Sometimes we from the South hemisphere wonder why you in the North think you have the monopoly of beauty, of dignity, of riches. Ethiopia is a country in crisis, where the people are suffering so acutely, yet Ethiopians are probably among the most beautiful, most noble people in the world. There is really no point in going there to deny this reality.... I believe this: that the people of the world are not those who lack basic material good. At any given moment in their history, the presently rich nations have been poor and vice versa.... There is no monopoly either of wealth or beauty in the world. I believe we must not destroy recognition of human dignity and beauty.... After all we [of the South] see ourselves as the agents of our own lives, not simply at the ‘‘victims’’ of external agencies.
