The World Of Sebastião Salgado At Peter Fetterman Gallery In Santa Monica

“The World of Sebastião Salgado” at Peter Fetterman Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica (on view through September 1), is a large-scale Memorial exhibition of prints by the master photographer Sebastião Salgado who died May 23, 2025. The gallery also has many of Salgado’s amazing books, some of them signed, which are available for sale.

Salgado is a master, an incomparable artist whose work took him to some 122 countries over the course of his career. Born in Brazil, Salgado first career was as an economist. In the 1980s, he began his career as a freelance photographer capturing news events. By chance, he was present at the assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan in Washington DC, and Salgado’s images earned him the front page in newspapers all over the world. But that was just his start.

It was his photographs of forgotten people, the tribes of the Amazon, the workers on the oil fields of Kuwait, and his photographs of disappearing nature in the Amazon and Antarctica that remain his unforgettable legacy.

“Through the lens of his camera, Sebastião tirelessly fought for a more just, humane and ecological world,” Mr. Salgado’s family said in a statement to the New York Times. “Rich in humanistic content, this work offers a sensitive perspective on the most disadvantaged populations and addresses the environmental issues threatening our planet.”

Salgado’s photos are primarily in Black and White. The exhibition at Peter Fetterman Gallery gives a sense of the amazing range of his work as well as his many talents. Salgado had an uncanny ability to put his subjects at ease and to photograph them in ways that seem completely authentic to who they are. His photos do not glorify, fetishize, or make his subjects seem other than who they are. Yet he renders them with great humanity and dignity.

Salgado’s landscapes are artworks of immaculate detail and composition. Even when he photographed the workers of a gold mine, the photos had their own beauty and power. That was Salgado’s gift.

In a quote shared by Peter Fetterman, Salgado explained how the work he did, in particular his photo project, GENESIS, transformed him. “I did 8 years of trips, 8 months a year. I went to 32 countries. But the big trip that I did was inside myself. I discovered that I am part of all this, that I am part of the animals. That we are part of everything alive in the planet. We are part of this huge equilibrium. You know for me this was the most important thing. We come out of the planet. We must go back to the planet.”