Member review

The Salt of the Earth review- ★★★★☆ This documentary is about the famous Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado (age 71), this documentary gives an insight into Sebastiao’s early life and also his elder years, the first 10 minutes of the documentary made me speechless just in the way he was describing all of his photos from his first project blew me away with how powerful the images were. Salgado spent his career documenting human suffering, this film about the 71 year old will leave you twitching with envy. Salgado’s life truly has been a life well-lived. Salgado began working as a professional in 1973; and he’s been telling the stories of our planet's most vulnerable places and people ever since he began his journey into the life of photography. His projects were powerful ones it all started in 1984, he had photographed the famine in Ethiopia, in 1991 he photographed the bitter bitter conclusion of the gulf war in Iraq, and in 1994 he photographed the genocide in Rwanda. Salgado with a single flash of his camera, he pictured a beautiful insight into the life of his subjects. One thing that really stuck by me during the film was one of his famous quotes “The power of a portrait lies in that fraction of a second, when you catch a glimpse of that person’s life” it really caught my attention as his bald head was silhouetted against a black screen as he narrated the story behind his lifetime of photos. One thing that I disliked was that we never really got to see the true Sebastiao as we never got a true glimpse into his own life in the film, we did learn about his upbringing in Brazil, his marriage to his wife (Lelia salgado) and his children (Julian Salgado & Rodrigo Salgado), but other than that we never really get a good view into what drives Salgado. The Salt of the earth was directed by the Oscar-nominated German filmmaker Wim Wenders and salgado’s son himself Juliano, after revisiting Rwanda a year after the horrific Genocide, Salgado could endure no more suffering and returned to His hometown in Brazil to take over his family farm. After all of these years of social despair, Salgado decided to try his hand in Environmental photography, the subject of this publication was titled Genesis. I can honestly say The Salt of the Earth is a film that will stick with me for a very long time , as it has been somewhat an inspiration for me as it shows how much impact a single picture can make to people's views on things.