Sebastiao Salgado Quotes

It's more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera

The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph.

The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate.

In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.

I don't believe a person has a style. What people have is a way of photographing what is inside them. What is there comes out.

I'm not an artist. An artist makes an object. Me, it's not an object, I work in history, I'm a storyteller.

I believe that the average person can help a lot, not by giving material goods but by participating, by being part of the discussion, by being truly concerned about what is going on in the world.

I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.

What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this.

I tell a little bit of my life to them, and they tell a little of theirs to me. The picture itself is just the tip of the iceberg.

Let's build Paradise again.

Photography is full of symbolism, it's a symbolic language. You have to be able to materialize all your thoughts in one single image.

I don't want anyone to appreciate the light or the palette of tones. I want my pictures to inform, to provoke discussion - and to raise money.

I looked through a lens and ended up abandoning everything else.

My way of photographing is my way of life. I photograph from my experience, my way of seeing things.

For me, art is such a wide concept - anything can be art.

It's not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed.

We live in a society where we never prepare people to be a community.

I'm not a religious person. The language of photography is symbolic.

I work on stories rather than individual pictures.

I have tried to bring about better communication between people. I believe that humanitarian photography is like economics. Economy is a kind of sociology, as is documentary photography.

I have two children. I have a Down syndrome child whom I love very much, and my wife that I love.

There comes a moment when it is no longer you who takes the photograph, but receives the way to do it quite naturally and fully.

I discovered that close to half the planet is 'pristine.' We live in towns such as London, Paris or Sao Paulo and have the impression that all the pristine areas are gone, but they are not.

I am a former economist. I never went to photography school to learn photography.

I have been photographing the portrait of an end of an era, as machines and computers replace human workers. What we have in these pictures is an archeology.

You photograph with all your ideology.

Of course I will continue photography. I love photography. But when you become old, it's too much.

The light in Alaska in particular is so beautiful. So beautiful! Such incredible light.

Of course, I won't be abandoning photography, because it is my life.