About the Work
It is as if - like the doomed Saviour - all of humanity is being made to drag its own cross to Golgotha. That is how the camera of the Brazilian artist has captured the teeming mass of workers at the Serra Pelada gold mine. The world documented by Sebastião Salgado two thousand years after the beginning of the Christian era is one of biblical plagues, but none of the many thousands of miners, none of their exploited fellow workers throughout the world have any prospect of salvation. Gazing down into the mine at the faceless human chain, Salgado interprets the 'Figure Eight' (1986) as a loop of hopelessness and despair. Individual suffering figures stand out only in their state of extreme exhaustion. Salgado, who has a doctorate in economics, fled to Paris in 1973 to escape the military dictatorship, and since then has travelled the globe in the footsteps of migrants. His work has added a mythical dimension to picture journalism. The workers depicted here remain trapped between fear and trance in the nightmares of their real existence. The snapshot records their resignation to their fate. In slavish labour, in wars and in natural catastrophes, Salgado's lens grants them a dying expression of dignity.
