77percent™

Even as machines, robots and computers replace workers, Salgado’s powerful, striking photographs reveal the backbreaking and unrelenting toil that is still the lot of millions of men and women around the globe. Never preachy or didactic, these 350 duotone images of tea pickers in Rwanda, dam builders in India, steelworkers in France and Ukraine, sugarcane harvesters in Brazil, assembly-line workers in Russia and China, sulfur miners in Indonesia and others, pay tribute to working people who preserve their dignity in the harshest conditions. In the lyrical accompanying essay, Salgado ( An Uncertain Grace ) laments Japan’s industrial fishing which decimates fish stocks, France’s agricultural policies and the global exploitation of manual laborers who do the bulk of the world’s work.

Kathleen Collins

Salgado, an economist by training, documents the unforgettable faces of workers at their jobs around the world. His widely published images of the oil-field firefighters in Kuwait may be the most familiar to U.S. readers. The catalog for a traveling exhibition, this book is divided into six chapters–Agriculture, Food, Mining, Industry, Oil, and Construction–that show the basest realities of work in some of its uncountable forms, from fishing in Spain, to textile factories in Kazakhstan, Eurotunnel construction in France, a slaughterhouse in South Dakota, and gold miners in Brazil. The reader almost never sees a smiling face or evidence of job satisfaction. Instead, this is an iconography of wage-labor toil, alienation, and survival. The location and subject of each related group of images are announced in the table of contents; otherwise, one needs to consult a separate softbound booklet in a pocket in the back, which offers Salgado’s facts and statistics about the particular natural resource, geographical area, and type of work pictured. The reproductions here are of superb quality. The winner of numerous international photography awards, Salgado ( An Uncertain Grace , LJ 2/1/91) has renewed the “concerned photographer” genre and produced one of the finest books of this decade. Essential for all art and photography collections.

Don West

To capture the depth and truth of the human experience, to affirm our universal humanity, to honor and inspire people’s struggle to better their world. I have documented individuals and communities who often against all odds, survive and strive — in the United States, Africa, and in Latin America.
I often look at my work and wonder what is its impact? Can images change minds? Can photography influence the way people think and understand the human condition? Certainly photography provides a window into realities we could never witness and in that sense helps us form deeper opinions about verbal information that comes to us. Can we trust what our eyes see? With the digital age upon us, we often wonder — Was the image manipulated? This is a major concern in the news gathering industry. Truth in reporting is paramount — or all believability is lost.