Over the past months a lot of my research work mentioned or analysed the photographic work of S. Salgado created over decades. On a recent trip to Paris I had the chance to visit another one of his exhibitions “Declarations” at the Musée de l’homme.
The exhibition features photographs taken in multiple locations between 1975 and 2009 with the majority dating back to the late 90s. The images taken all across the globe are assembled in groupings with statements taken from the Declarations of human rights printed above in French and English. The images highlight the difference between the UN Declaration and real life.
The documentary images are rich in contrast and illuminate situations in refugee camps, struggle for religious freedom and right to education among other elements of the Declaration.
Brief notes presented with each image give background information about the date, location and political situation which benefits the viewers experience as it is now possible to connect the image with the statements printed across the walls.
Similar to Genesis which I visited at the ICP in New York back in 2014, the large prints across the walls draw in attention and work well to seperate the exhibition into seperate elements. The 30 images are presented along with 9 written statements with larger prints often featuring groups of people and smaller sizes used for individual portraits.
While Genesis focused on the Beauty of global landscapes, Declarations can be seen as a statement to injustice. While the Declaration of Human Rights should be the ground rules for every state and nation often times smaller countries or war ridden countries loose these basic rights in favour of their agenda.
Salgado images don’t show tragedies or horrors, no blood and fight scenes. Instead he focuses on the fate of individuals to visualise global problems.
This approach of focus on personal stories to tell a larger story can be seen as highly effective as the audience appears to sympathise with an individual over a larger group.
For my personal project this is an important aspect to consider as it could benefit my larger message of climate change to investigate personal stories and individual fates in more depth throughout the series.
Analysing Declarations under the theory of the sublime and beautiful it is noticeable that Salgado approaches the subject from a similar vantage point as Genesis. Focusing on the Beautiful in his group images and wide angle shots he’s portraits are personal and up close with rich details and intensive stares. If Migrations was seen by Sontag as too Beautiful, the images presented as a part of this newest series are using the same Beautiful approach but society seems more open to accept the concept now.
Similar to Genesis The sublime can be found in some of Salgado's images. While the framing, composition, lighting and details are beautiful and are the details that class Salgado's work as beautiful, the scenes photographed are bleaker and far less breathtaking.
Children in detention centres, large funerals, destroyed streets of Kabul and multiple refugee camps are sublime realities society often overlooks. Combining the sublime and the beautiful in a single image Salgado masters the art of educating as well as raising awareness.
Criticising and leaving space for an audience to draw its own conclusions.
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