At 80 years old, with half a century of career on his shoulders, Sebastião Salgado did not speak of legacy, but of urgency. "Photography is the mirror of society," he said during an interview in 2024, on the occasion of an exhibition at London's Somerset House, where he presented a small but significant selection of his most representative images.

Salgado was more than a photographer: he was a patient and obstinate witness of human suffering, of labor and exodus, and in his last years, a convinced defender of nature. His exhibition coincided with the presentation of the World Photography Organisation's Lifetime Achievement Award. "It is the prize for a life's work," he said, grateful.

From his beginnings in photography in 1973, after studying economics, he never turned away from the lens. And while his images were celebrated as art, he clearly denied it. "In an exhibition like this, people tell me I'm an artist and I tell them no, I'm a photographer and it's a great privilege to be one. I have been an emissary of the society of which I am a part."

In his view of the world there was also a critical conscience. He was awarded on multiple occasions, including the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 1998. That same year he founded with his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, the Terra Institute, an organization that fights to reforest the Amazon and combat the destructive advance of global consumption. "We have lost 18.2 percent of the Amazon. But it has not been only Brazilians or other countries in that region that have destroyed that, it has been our consumer society, because of a terrible need for consumption that we have, for profit."

In his view, deforestation, climate change and biodiversity loss were intertwined tragedies. "There is a second drama as important as global warming, which is the loss of water," he warned. And he gave concrete examples: communities in the south of France supplied by tanker trucks, a phenomenon that decades ago was only seen in Africa. "Germany in the last 40 years has lost 70 percent of its biodiversity," he added. "Plants have no pollination because they have no insects."

For Salgado, it was not a matter of ill will, but a lack of awareness. "We have to bring the information, it's not that people are bad, it's that there is a lack of correct information and awareness among people."

In his final words during that conversation, Salgado was lucid and serene in the face of approaching death. "I have yet to die now. I'm 50 years into my career and I've turned 80. I'm closer to death than anything else. You live to be 90 at the most. So I'm not far away, but I continue to photograph, I continue to work, I continue to do things the same way."

He was not looking for posterity. "I have no concern or any pretense of how I will be remembered. It is my life that is in the photos and nothing else." That is the image he leaves us. Farewell to a great one.

With information from AFP