Sebastião Salgado (1944-2025)

PHOTOSNACK #561

Dear Sebastião,

I never met you.
But for years, I’ve felt as though I knew you-through your photographs, through the people you introduced me to, through the quiet way you showed us how to see.

You’ve just left this world, and I wanted to write you a note.
Not because I think you’ll read it.
But because there’s gratitude that needs to be spoken, somehow.

Thank you for the way you looked at people.
Not from above. Not from afar. But from beside them.
You stayed. You listened. You bore witness.
And your photographs… they still carry that presence, that dignity.

You showed us miners, refugees, mothers, children, people whose names we’ll never know—but whose eyes we can’t forget.
You gave them space. And in doing so, you gave us something too.
You reminded us that photography can still be about truth. And about care.

Later, when you turned your lens to nature, I saw something shift.
The same reverence, but this time directed at the earth itself.
And when you returned home to Brazil, to rebuild a dying forest with your wife Lélia—planting millions of trees, one by one—I understood:

You weren’t just documenting the world.
You were loving it. Actively. Bravely. Quietly.

Your images have been with me for years.
They’ve shaped how I see, how I work, how I move through this life.
And today, I just wanted to say:
Thank you.

For what you made.
For how you lived.
For reminding me—and all of us—that the camera, in the right hands, can be an act of hope.

Rest well, Sebastião.

With love and admiration,
Tomasz

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Sebastião Salgado passed away on May 23, 2025, at the age of 81.

You can watch his remarkable TED Talk here.
Let his voice, like his photographs, stay with us a little longer.