Product Description

In 1984 Sebastião Salgado began what would be a fifteen-month project of photographing the drought-stricken Sahel region of Africa in the countries of Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and Sudan, where approximately one million people died from extreme malnutrition and related causes. Working with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, Salgado documented the enormous suffering and the great dignity of the refugees. This early work became a template for his future photographic projects about other afflicted people around the world. Since then, Salgado has again and again sought to give visual voice to those millions of human beings who, because of military conflict, poverty, famine, overpopulation, pestilence, environmental degradation, and other forms of catastrophe, teeter on the edge of survival. Beautifully produced, with thoughtful supporting narratives by Orville Schell, Fred Ritchin, and Eduardo Galeano, this first U.S. edition brings some of Salgado's earliest and most important work to an American audience for the first time. Twenty years after the photographs were taken, Sahel: The End of the Road is still painfully relevant. Born in Brazil in 1944, Sebastião Salgado studied economics in São Paulo and Paris and worked in Brazil and England. While traveling as an economist to Africa, he began photographing the people he encountered. Working entirely in a black-and-white format, Salgado highlights the larger meaning of what is happening to his subjects with an imagery that testifies to the fundamental dignity of all humanity while simultaneously protesting its violation by war, poverty, and other injustices. "The planet remains divided," Salgado explains. "The first world in a crisis of excess, the third world in a crisis of need." This disparity between the haves and the have-nots is the subtext of almost all of Salgado's work. Illustrations: 88 duotones

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116389 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 152 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780520241701
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

From Publishers Weekly
Shot over 15 months during 1984–1985 as a horrific famine raged across sub-Saharan Africa, Salgado's documentation of the Sahel region (including parts of Chad, Ethiopia, Mali and the Sudan) was one of his first projects as he transitioned from working economist to photographer. More than 50 prizes and many books and exhibitions later, this edition brings that early work into the States in book form for the first time. Each of the 80 or so b&w shots is given a full page with generous borders; that photos of people near death are beautifully composed and printed make for just two of their paradoxes. Orville Schell argues in his foreword that "[Salgado's] strategy is to pull us into the subject with visual seduction, and then once we are enthralled—or shocked, as the case may be—to educate us about the issue at hand." With the genocide and displacement of black Africans by their Arab northern compatriots in the Sudan currently leading to serious food shortages, Salgado's book remains at the very least a relevant call to action. Portions of the profits of the book will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"While art should speak for itself, Salgado's photography is first and foremost a documentary way of bearing witness to something else. His work is both an anguished cri de coeur and, although he professes not to be religions, something of a votive offering presented in the hopes of getting the attention of a world that sometimes seems to have fallen asleep." - Orville Schell, from the Foreword"

From the Inside Flap
"While art should speak for itself, Salgado's photography is first and foremost a documentary way of bearing witness to something else. His work is both an anguished cri de coeur and, although he professes not to be religious, something of a votive offering presented in the hopes of getting the attention of a world that sometimes seems to have fallen asleep."--Orville Schell, from the Foreword

Customer Reviews

Will haunt you long after you put it down
In 1984-1985 approximately one million people died as a result of a severe famine in the Sahel region of Africa (includes parts of Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and Sudan). Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado spent many months shooting the disaster and "Sahel: The End of the Road" is the remarkable result of his efforts. The photos, all in black and white, are art in the most meaningful sense. Salgado's images grab you by the throat and pull you into the dizzying mix of horror, pain, love, hope and struggle that exists within a crisis like this.

I suspect that some may criticize Salgado's work for being too good. His photographs are so haunting and dramatic that they arguably could be seen as exploitive. His subjects, starving people, could be mistaken for actors on Hollywood sets precisely designed to drag emotions from viewers. If Stephen Spielberg did a famine movie to match "Schindler's List", for example, it probably would look a lot like Salgado's book. I imagine critics thinking that famine is not fiction; it's real and it's ugly. But Salgado's images are not staged. This obviously was life, death and the in-between as it occurred before his eyes. His choice of black and white film and his talent for seeing, framing and capturing spectacular shots are hardly crimes. He is a great photographer and he did what he does. One cannot blame him for preferring to apply his talents out on the jagged edge of human misery rather than some Paris runway or football match. "Sahel: The End of the Road" is not poverty pornography. I am very sensitive to the issue of extreme poverty yet I did not close this book with a feeling of disgust, rather I felt more aware, more human and more determined to care.

Back in 1984, during the height of that terrible famine, images on CNN and the BBC forced the western world to cringe in horror. Some turned away; some tried to help. (Remember "Live Aid" and the hit song, "We are the World"?) Politicians delivered determined speeches, preachers prayed, and the public agreed that mass starvation was not something the modern world should allow to happen. Then, of course, nothing meaningful was done to end global hunger or prevent future famines. Today, nearly a quarter of a century after the famine that Salgado photographed, more than 800 million people do not have enough food. Every day more than 16,000 children die from hunger. That's one child dying every five seconds. Buying this book, by the way, does provide some direct help as a portion of profits are given to Doctors Without Borders, an organization that provides medical aid to people in the developing world.

The true horror of Salgado's book is not that it serves as a record of that terrible famine that occurred 24 years ago. This is not a mere collection of snapshots, past moments frozen forever by a camera. No, more than anything, Salgado's work is a mirror that reflects a current and continuing horror that we in the West seem to find acceptable.
I highly recommend this book. It may not be the happiest book you will ever own but that is no reason not to experience the work of Salgado. As a human you have an obligation to at least look at the real world we inhabit. Don't turn away. Look, and see humanity for what it really is.

For those who feel the desire or need to help improve global hunger in some way, I suggest visiting [...] and making a donation. There is a convenient page on the site that accommodates credit card transactions. A few of your dollars won't stop hunger or change the world but it may save a child or two. And that's not a bad start.

--Guy P. Harrison, author of

Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity

and

50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

Riveting imagery
One of the most potent books on the human experience. I got a lump in my throat while viewing this collection of prints. Sebastiao Salgado is a master at using value to capture shape and texture in his subject matter.

great but too real
I think Sebastiao Salgado is a great photographer. All the black and white pictures are in duotone color, which make them look very professional. Something this book has is that you can see through people and at the same time look to a picture with great composition, so you can feel the picture and at the same time admire it's appearance. I just think the pictures are too sad for me, you can see the real people suffering so much.