The Salt of the Earth

Dir: Wim Wenders

2014

****

The Salt of the Earth is a stunning document on the life and career of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado that explores his passion and the importance of what he has achieved. Salgado was born in 1944 in Aimorés, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. After a somewhat itinerant childhood, Salgado initially trained as an economist, earning a master’s degree in economics from the University of São Paulo. He began work as an economist for the International Coffee Organization, often traveling to Africa on missions for the World Bank, when he first started seriously taking photographs. He chose to abandon a career as an economist and switched to photography in 1973 after his wife bought him a camera as a gift, working initially on news assignments before veering more towards documentary-type work. Salgado's work typically explores natural environments and the humans who inhabit them and he is particularly noted for his social documentary photography of workers in less developed nations. His black and white photographs illuminate how the environment and humans are exploited to maximize profit for the global economic market. Following the timeline of his life, the documentary uses his own photos and videos to illustrate Salgado's life and work beginning with his exile from Brazil and his subsequent transition from economist to artist and explorer. The documentary follows him as he travels around South America, including the countries neighboring his native Brazil, spending time among and photographing native tribes, living lives not much touched by the modern world. Co-directed by Salgado's son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the film contains recollections from childhood of a father who was absent much of the time and the times he accompanied his father on trips to discover who Salgado was beyond his childhood conception. Next, Salgado traveled to the Sehel region of Africa, shown in unflinching and heartbreaking video and photographs. Salgado referred to the famine in Ethiopia as a problem with sharing, not just a natural disaster. He documented the largest ever refugee camps and the innumerable deaths that occurred there, from hunger, cholera, and cold. His work covering famine in Africa brought worldwide attention to the region and the underlying causes. The film follows forty years of Salgado's work from South America, to Africa, Europe, the Arctic, and back home to Brazil focusing on international conflicts, starvation and exodus, and natural landscapes in decline. One of his more famous collections of photos came as he happened to be the first photographer on the scene of the Kuwaiti oil fires back in 1991. Among these different projects, the film also touches on the work Lélia and Sebastião have done since the 1990s on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. In 1998, they succeeded in turning this land into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra. The institute is dedicated to a mission of reforestation, conservation and environmental education. The transformation is incredible. The film is like a glossy Werner Herzog documentary without the philosophical narration – like many of Wim Wenders’ films are. While I felt it lacked the flare of Wender’s previous documentary (2011’s Pina – a biopic of the work of dancer and choriographer Pina Bausch), this was a very different picture. In many respects, Sebastião Salgado directed the film, as it is his images that we see constantly throughout. It also must be said that Juliano Salgado's co-direction jolts the film somewhat and makes it a little too personal to him. It’s a great film but its not a 100% Wim Wenders film – which is how it should be – even though I think I would have preferred it if it had been. Again, the images are awesome and everything is covered, I just think that sometimes it’s not always in the interest of a document to be told by the person it is documenting. Sometimes the picture needs to be looked at by someone else. It’s just a slight niggle I have and I wouldn’t even have it, had the film not have been made by the great Wim Wenders. The title of the film is a biblical reference, Matthew 5:13: 'You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.' It has since been known as a description of a good person who performs good deeds but not for selfish reasons or personal gain. It’s a fair description. Sure Salgado has become successful but his is a life that has been essentially sacrificed for a greater cause. This documentary captures the selflessness, the passion and the great achievements made but without self congratulation. Salgado takes part in the film not to pat himself on the back, but to highlight each cause he has worked on and to help spread the message that his photographs capture. The images are stunning and they speak for themselves.