Few contemporary photographers are as synonymous with black and white as Sebasti茫o Salgado (1944鈥2025). The Brazilian activist, documentarian and photojournalist is world-renowned, notably for images made in the Amazon rainforest and the Serra Pelada gold mine, Brazil. Now, a new collection of Salgado’s pictures, titled Glaciers, is dedicated to some of the planet鈥檚 most remote places. It spans from dramatic ice fields in Patagonia to the Himalayas鈥 towering peaks. Salgado also travelled to Antarctica to capture its ice shelves, as well as to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, a hugely volcanic region.
The book features 65 duotone photographs, depicting sweeping vistas, massive crevasses, wind-swept snow and thousands of gathering penguins. Throughout, light and shadow-play highlight form, texture and scale. Landscapes might feel like a change of pace from some of Salgado鈥檚 more human-centric series, like Workers (1993) or Amazonia (2021), which focused on themes of labour and migration. Yet people are always lurking at the edges of the frame. This is a portrait of the world鈥檚 glaciers at a critical moment in history, where human-caused heating is leading to accelerated melt. Around 750 disappear each year.
The visuals are enhanced by words from climate scientist Elisa Palazzi, who emphasises the importance of glaciers to life on Earth. She calls them 鈥渟entinels of climate change,鈥 bearing witness to the rate at which the planet is heating. They regulate the Earth’s temperature, supply water to two billion people and provide climate records. Her essay examines the mechanics of glacier formation, transformation and decline, helping to position the volume as a verifiable source of information and agent of change.
In a world saturated by media, Salgado’s pictures manage to cut through the noise. The sublime 鈥 where overwhelming beauty meets terror, as theorised by Edmund Burke in the mid-eighteenth century and exemplified by the paintings of聽J.M.W Turner 鈥 is never so present as here. Despite many of these images being made in the early 2000s and 2010s, you鈥檇 be forgiven for thinking these epic compositions are from an earlier time. Glaciers inspires the same sense of awe that was revered by the Romantics, whilst never losing sight of the very real 鈥 and contemporary 鈥 environmental issues at its heart.
Sebasti茫o Salgado: Glaciers
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image Credits:
1. A calving glacier, amidst a landscape that shows the effects of progressive erosion. Grey Glacier, Campo de Hielo, Torres del Paine National Park, Patagonia, Chile, 2007. 漏 Sebasti茫o Salgado / Prestel.
2. Icebergs are huge blocks of ice that break off from a glacier and drift in the sea. Between Bristol Island and Bellingshausen Island, South Sandwich Islands, 2009. 漏 Sebasti茫o Salgado / Prestel.
3. Kluane National Park and Preserve, Canada, 2011. 漏 Sebasti茫o Salgado / Prestel.
4. A glacier at the foot of Cerro Torre, Torre Egger, and Punta Herron, peaks located in Patagonia on the border between Chile and Argentina, 2007. 漏 Sebasti茫o Salgado / Prestel.
