The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who has died aged 81, produced striking works of immense scale and scope that recorded globally significant issues for more than half a century. Variously described as working in a humanitarian or documentary tradition, he adapted both to his own genre.
Subjects such as child labour and indigenous religious cultures were recontextualised in the multiple themes of more than 30 books and as many large-scale exhibitions in his lifetime. Using black-and-white film, which he believed avoided the “distractions” of colour, he awarded his subjects both significance and dignity.
