CNN
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According to his nonprofit Institoto Terra, award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has passed away. He was 81 years old.
“It is a deep sadness to announce the death of Sebastian Salgado, founder, mentor and eternal source of inspiration,” Instagram Terra said in an Instagram post that did not list the cause of death.
Salgado was survived by two sons, two grandchildren and his partner, Lelia Delziwanic Salgado.
“Sebastian was more than one of the greatest photographers of our time,” the post continued. “Along with his life partner, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, he let hopes in places where devastation was, bringing back the belief that restoring the environment is also an act of love for humanity.”
Initially trained as an economist, Salgado spent much of his long career documenting the impact of heavy industry on the environment, from his native Brazilian gold mining monographs to books on the oil fires in Kuwait.
Salgado’s final book, “Amazônia,” featured a Brazilian region of the same name, focusing on the sustainable examples offered by the indigenous Amazon community and the beauty of its river landscape.
“We’re introducing another Amazonia,” Salgado told CNN in 2021. “There’s no fire or destruction.
“We cannot build our future — humanity’s future based solely on technology,” Salgado continued. “We must look at the past. We must consider anything we have done in our history. There is a great opportunity for humans. The prehistoric period of humanity is now in Amazonia.”
The continued destruction of the rainforest was in the pain of Salgado and dedicated to planting trees through his nonprofit organization for many years to restore Brazil’s exposed forests. In 2021, he told CNN that he and his volunteers planted more than 3 million trees in his family’s estate in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest over 22 years.
“We can rebuild the planets we destroyed. We must,” Salgado said.
CNN’s Thomas Page provided the report.
