{"product_id":"sebastiao-salgado-gold","title":"Sebastiao Salgado Gold","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“What is it about a dull yellow metal that drives men to abandon their homes, sell their belongings and cross a continent in order to risk life, limbs and sanity for a dream?” – \u003c\/em\u003eSebastião Salgado\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When Sebastião Salgado was finally authorized to visit \u003cstrong\u003eSerra Pelada\u003c\/strong\u003e in September 1986, having been blocked for six years by Brazil’s military authorities, he was ill-prepared to take in the extraordinary spectacle that awaited him on this remote hilltop on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. Before him opened \u003cstrong\u003ea vast hole, some 200 meters wide and deep, teeming with tens of thousands of barely-clothed men\u003c\/strong\u003e. Half of them carried sacks weighing up to 40 kilograms up wooden ladders, the others leaping down muddy slopes back into the cavernous maw. Their bodies and faces were the color of ochre, stained by the iron ore in the earth they had excavated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After gold was discovered in one of its streams in 1979, Serra Pelada evoked the long-promised El Dorado as \u003cstrong\u003ethe world’s largest open-air gold mine\u003c\/strong\u003e, employing some 50,000 diggers in appalling conditions. Today, \u003cstrong\u003eBrazil’s wildest gold rush is merely the stuff of legend\u003c\/strong\u003e, kept alive by a few happy memories, many pained regrets—and Sebastião Salgado’s photographs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Color dominated the glossy pages of magazines when Salgado shot these images. Black and white was a risky path, but the Serra Pelada portfolio would mark \u003cstrong\u003ea return to the grace of monochrome photography\u003c\/strong\u003e, following a tradition whose masters, from Edward Weston and Brassaï to Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, had defined the early and mid-20th century. When Salgado’s images reached \u003cem\u003eThe New York Times Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e, something extraordinary happened: there was complete silence. “In my entire career at \u003cem\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/em\u003e,” recalled photo editor Peter Howe, “\u003cstrong\u003eI never saw editors react to any set of pictures as they did to \u003cem\u003eSerra Pelada\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Today, with photography absorbed by the art world and digital manipulation, Salgado’s portfolio holds \u003cstrong\u003ea biblical quality\u003c\/strong\u003e and projects an immediacy that makes them vividly contemporary. The mine at Serra Pelada has been long closed, yet \u003cstrong\u003ethe intense drama of the gold rush leaps out of these images\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This book gathers \u003cstrong\u003eSalgado’s complete Serra Pelada portfolio in museum-quality reproductions\u003c\/strong\u003e, accompanied by \u003cstrong\u003ea foreword by the photographer\u003c\/strong\u003e and an essay by Alan Riding.INSTITUTO TERRAFounded in 1998 at Aimorés in the state of Minas Gerais, Instituto Terra is the culmination of Lélia Wanick Salgado and Sebastião Salgado’s lifelong activism and work as cultural documentarians. Through a scientific program of planting and raising saplings, the organization has performed a miraculous reforestation of the once infertile region and furthered the Salgados’ mission of reversing the damage done to our planet. TASCHEN is proud to reach carbon zero status through our continued partnership.\u003cstrong\u003eAlso available in a signed and limited Collector’s Edition\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57315982147966,"sku":"NW9783836575089","price":41.1,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9783836575089.jpg?v=1778688912","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/products\/sebastiao-salgado-gold","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}