Gallery 2
17.04 - 4.06.2000

SEBĂSTIAO SALGADO (Brazil/France) WORKERS - photography

--- Curator: Léila Wanick-Salgado
--- Curator from the CCA side: Marek Grygiel
--- Co-operation: Elzbieta Król

Exhibition opening: 17.04, 6 p.m.

Workers is one of the most famous photo exhibitions done by Sebăstiao Salgado. It consists of 250 black and white photographs showing working people on all continents

SEBASTIAO SALGADO: Wodowanie statku, Gdańsk, 1990

Work, or rather a wide group of working people of the industrial era is the main theme of his pictures taken in the last decades of the 20th century. The message is universal - the photographs show people of different professions, from different and often far away parts of the world.

SEBASTIAO SALGADO: Połów tunczyków, La Maltanza, Sycylia, 1991

Salgado is present not only at the big industrial centres (the shipyards in France and Poland, Russian and Ukrainian steelworks) but also at the inaccessible gold mines in Brazil, the tea plantations in Rajasthan, Kuwait’s oilfields, destroyed during the Gulf War. He once said that his aim is to record the aspects of human activity, especially the manual work which in today’s fast technological and economical development is slowly passing away.

Sebăstiao Salgado was born in 1944 in Brazil. He studied economy on the Sao Paulo University and also on the University in Paris, where he obtained his doctor’s degree. At first he worked as an economist in Brazil and the United Kingdom but from 1973 he devoted all his time to photography. In the years 1975-79 he worked for the Gamma Agency, later from 1979 to 1994 for the Magnum Agency. Today he works for the Amazonas Images Press Agency, which has all the rights to his pictures.

SEBASTIAO SALGADO: Rowery na ulicach Szanghaju, Chiny, 1989

Sebăstiao Salgado has done several photo series, documenting the social problems all around the world: migration, the immigrant’s difficult adaptation process, the consequences of ethnic conflicts. His photographs seem to call for justice, they take the side of the poor, week and needy; they show us all the dangers of the globalisation process. Thanks to their artistic form, powerful expression and simplicity they are easily understood and widely acknowledged around the globe.

SEBASTIAO SALGADO: Akcja gaszenia szybów naftowych, Kuwejt, 1991

Sebăstiao Salgado has shown his pictures in over 100 of the world’s most prestigious galleries and art centres. He is also the author of many albums, the famous one Terra was published in seven countries. He received many honourable awards and prizes, including the World Press Photo award, the Oscar Barnack award for the humane content of his photographs, the Hasselblad Foundation award and New York International Centre of Photography Award.

SEBASTIAO SALGADO: Budowa kanału w Radżastanie w Indiach

The Workers exhibition in Warsaw’s Centre for Contemporary Art is the first Polish presentation of Salgado’s pictures.

Marek Grygiel

http://fototapeta.art.pl



Many thanks to the sponsors of the exhibitiony:


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Center for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski castle
Al.Ujazdowskie 6, 00-461 Warsaw, Poland
tel: (48 22) 628 12 71-3, (48 22) 628 76 83 ; fax: (48 22) 628 95 50
e-mail:csw@ikp.atm.com.pl