Words cannot reflect what social photographer Sebastião Salgado visualises and captures, for he is a writer of a different kind, “a man writing and rewriting the world with lights and shadows.” By being both a biographical documentary and a showcase of his work, Wim Wenders’ (Pina) The Salt of the Earth can easily teach anyone how to ‘read’ what Salgado ‘writes’.
Initially, the film can feel like a bare-bones display of Salgado’s portfolio. Going straight into one of his most popular works, glorious images of the gold mining colonies in Serra Pelada, Salgado’s mastery of the art-form becomes resoundingly clear.
Then the film turns the pages of Salgado’s personal history book, from life growing up on his father’s luscious farm to the cusp of entering parenthood himself where he narrowly avoided becoming an economist (thank God). It’s not exactly a riveting beginning to his life story, but it’s essential to understanding Salgado’s love for people and his attraction to the human condition – as well as his desire to display it all in single frames.
But when the film reaches Salgado’s more intense work, the merging of ‘biopic’ and ‘showcase’ turns The Salt of the Earth into an entirely different beast, and the soul-crumbling impact of his imagery becomes unavoidable. Salgado’s most directly profound collection, ‘Sahel: The End of the Road’, applies his artistic affection for humanity to the most haunting degree – a crippling collage of disintegrated hope and hollow misery highlighted and immortalised by Salgado’s lens.
As we witness his fantasy-like photography focused on this horror, Salgado constantly grounds the art in reality with his experiences being on ground zero with his subjects. The result is a voyage into the surreal that stays in the mind, the heart and the throat for many weeks to come.
Fortunately, the film ends with an uplifting tone that perfectly intertwines Salgado’s beautiful ‘Genesis’ collection with his own project of growth – one that sees him reviving his father’s fallen land.
‘The Salt of the Earth’ Movie Times
