Sebastião Salgado: Deep black in grey and white

It's always a nice surprise to come across Sebastião Salgado's photos on the double page of a magazine like Connaissance des Arts. Even though we know all these sumptuous photographs made in Amazonia, it feels strange to suddenly find them in this thread of news and novelties. You look at them differently. And so does the rest.

Drawn in by the plastic beauty of Salgado's pictures, we forget that the six pages devoted here to the photographer committed to saving the planet's green lung are a pretext for the sound and light show of 200 of his images that the Philarmonie de Paris is organising this spring. Apart from the presentation of this event, the article confines itself to a very predictable laudatory bio of the cause defended. A pity. Because the artistic interest of Salgado's photos is not limited to the visual testimony of the "humanist epics" mentioned here. The activist would make us forget the artist. Or worse, define him. But so much the better, in the end. If this allows Sebastião Salgado's highly contrasting black and white images to achieve their full effect, sublimated by the glossy paper.

Salgado Amazônia - Philharmonie de Paris from 20 MAY to 31 October

Images Amazonas

RXM