 Welcome to the Davos Agenda, I'm Tanya Briar and I'm thrilled to be joined by the Crystal Award winner 2021 and the world-renowned photographer, Sebastio Salgado, for an insight and conversation into his fascinating life. Sebastio, thank you so much for joining me today. Many congratulations on winning the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. How does that make you feel you've won so many awards in your life? Thank you Tanya. I quite have, this award has a meaning because it's placed in the center of the decisions of the planet and I have a hope that all these dignitaries that come for this meeting, they can hear a little bit the people that are concerned with this award and our preoccupation, a way of life and the impact that in my case these pictures can made to the people that look into them. You see we are all together fighting for a better life, for a better way of life, for the respect to other the people that have no protection. I'm quite happy to receive this award in this sense. Of course you've been documenting a very fast changing planet for decades now. We're in the middle of the global pandemic, what is that like for you Sebastio? Could you ever have imagined anything like this? No, no, no, no. It's simply imagine something like that. I believe for our generation. My generation belongs to me because most probably the generation that lived the Second World War, the generation that lived before all this huge disease in 1918, the Spanish fever that came around the world yes was possible then to imagine, but for us it was impossible. We were no one who were expecting this and it's a special moment because the planet will not change. The planet has changed. We are living a different moment now. Everything in this planet has changed and I have a big hope that we will bring, this moment will bring us toward the essential in this planet and what is essential in this planet is to live a better life, to have a nice relation inside our community of humans, have a sense of solidarity and if we can reach something in that direction I believe that would be very important because we are paying a very high tribute. How has it impacted you personally and also your home country of Brazil? Me personally impact a lot because my life in the last 50 years was moving this planet. I was recording what I believe that was essential. Let's say I was navigating in the up of the wave of the history and after one year I don't navigate more. I'm here trying to protect myself because I will be completing now in February 77 years old. I'm a bigger, my age is in a big danger, the group of my age. I'm here with my wife that has 74 years old and we are paying a lot of attention. I was working hard in Amazonia. I worked hard with the Indian communities in the last seven, eight years. I prepare a big board of work. We'll be having quite large ambitions and books come out now in 2021 about the Indian communities and about the Amazonian in general. I had a big chance. I had to finish my shooting in Amazonia. I had just one store more to go that was impossible to me to do because of the COVID. I used this about one year that I stopped now to edit. My wife designed all my books. She designed the books. She designed the shows and we use our time. But you see, I had many years of split in my life with the Indian communities and all the tribes, they become very close, become very friends and they are living a danger much bigger than ours because they have no antibody. They have no protection for the diseases coming outside of the forest and was necessary to fight very hard this last year, mostly in the beginning of the disease in order to try to protect the tribes to create a kind of sanitary belt toward the Amazonian forest to protect these communities. This is a big occupation. We lose a lot of Indians in the Amazonian forest. But after a while, it seems that the things are going a little bit better. They are a little bit more isolated. That was my most important preoccupation in the disease was fighting directly protection of these communities. Because you led a global petition and wrote to the president Bolsonaro to try and help the indigenous people, why do you think that it took people like yourself to push the government? I have no power at all. I'm just a photographer. And what with my wife, we did, we create one manifest, not exactly towards only the president of Bolsonaro, towards the three powers in Brazil, the judiciary, the legislative and the executive powers in Brazil. And we arrived at the 1067 senior children, very important people around this planet, and that create a huge impact in Brazil. And we had a very nice reply from the judiciary power in Brazil. The judiciary responded to our demand and we acted together. That was very, very important. The results that we have linked together with all the indigenous association and a lot of goodwill people that had the same preoccupation, we had a very, very, very big impact inside Brazil with this. And of course, you say you're only a photographer, but you're one of the most celebrated and renowned around the world, Sebastião. Can you just take me back to your upbringing in Brazil? And when you decided that that's what you wanted to do? Because I believe you started out in a life of economics. Yes. When we leave Brazil in 1969, we fly in the decade of the ship in Brazil. My wife and myself was necessary to leave Brazil. We were very young. I was just 25 years old. My wife, 23 years old. I had a finish on master degrees in the University of São Paulo in Brazil. And I came to Paris, to France to prepare a PhD in economics. I prepared the theoretical part of this studies and I went to work as an economist in an international organization. And from there, that I discovered photography and I jumped from economics to photography. Economy gave me a fabulous base, a fabulous tool of analysis to understand my planet, to understand the society that impact of it. And in these years that I start photography, in reality, I start photography in 1972. And all these years, my photography was in coordination with our history. And I do not choose to do this was instinctively. And today, looking back, I see that I had a big chance to be linked very close to the historical moment that I live. And my photography represents a little bit of this. What sort of values did your parents instill on you growing up in the farm area in Brazil? Do you think that's come traveled with you as you've progressed in your life and how it's influenced you? We photograph with our heritage in aspects of the heritage. For example, my stethical heritage, my lines, my compositions came from these lines from the farm that I born in Brazil was in the area. My father had a big farm in Brazil. And I were in the deep high land of this farm, looking at the arrival of the rain season with this amazing clouds, this amazing tropical rent, and all these lines stays inside me. I came from the most baroque state of Brazil that the state of Minas Gerais, the Portuguese baroque in reality born there. And you see the uncertain way my photography is quite a baroque. And this is part of my heritage. I am part of this generation that's the fifth big group that walked to the town when I born the Brazilians, leaving the fields for 92%. Today we are about 90, 92% humans. We made a reversion of the model in Brazil. And part of this first generation that abandoned the fields, went to the towns, made the studies to live in another way. And that for me was very important and leave this whole conflict in Brazil. This coup d'etat in 1964, all this new repression, being a refugee in France. And till now I'm a migrant. And all these together built my way of seeing my ideology and link with my way to see my aesthetics because photography is a completely esthetical language. And all these together made the the the the board of work that I work all my life long. And of course you talk about your wife Leylia who's been with you from the start of your career and has been a partner to you in everything you were talking about how she does your books with you. How important is that relationship? How important has that been for you from the start, Sebastia? Probably the most important thing that ever happened in my life is the day that I met Leylia. We met in 1964. We are together after this moment. And we were very young. I was saying not 20 years old yet. Leylia was just the end of the 16th. And we are together till now. We built a life together. We had many different experiences as refugees. As students I made my studies in economy Leylia is an architect. And we were to get in group of studies, especially here in the universe of Paris. And we had our family life. We have a Down syndrome kid. This Down syndrome kid made a huge construction in our life. He built a lot of different ways to participate in the society, to see the society. My wife, after she abandoned architecture, she came to photography. And she designed all my books. She designed all my shows. We created an environmental project together in Brazil, Instituto Terra in Brazil is today most probably one of the biggest environmental institution in Brazil that planted trees. We planted in our space today more than 3 million trees of more than 300 different species. We are building now the end of the construction of this kind of national park that we create in the old farm of my parents that we transform it in a national park. And it's then that we plant all these trees. And now we started to plant 1 million trees again. But these trees that we're planting now is the one that we stay for 1 million years. For more than this. Because it's the trees that arrived in the end in the forest. We built a forest to wait the reception of these trees that we are planting now. And that was fabulous. We create a water program in our valley. Our valley in Brazil is about as big as Portugal. And we are rebuilding the system of water in this valley. It is next 40, 50 years. Of course, we'll be no more there. But the institution we go, we'll be planting more than 150 million trees to recuperate all the source of water of our valley. We'll rebuild the water system of our valley. And this we do together with Lele. We create a group in Brazil. It's a big group. A very nice group. And everything in the life we did together and we keep going. It's an incredible achievement what you've done with these trees. And as you say, they will last for beyond your years. But it's also the same with photographs, isn't it, Sebastião? And how that they will last too. What do you think makes a great photograph? Well, there is many different kinds of photography. I can say one of my kind of photography. That's human photography. That's environmental photography. You see, in reality, we do not really made these photographers. We receive these photographers. It's dependent of the way that we have a relation, more nice or more strong, more tight with the community that we have become to work with than that you receive the more strong photographers. You must have a very big identification with the history that we do. In photography, you can photograph only stories that will have a big identification with them to be comfortable there, to stay long time. My stories took a long time. I just finished Amazonian project that I spent about seven years in Amazonian photographing. I did before that a story called Genesis about environmental in the planet, what they spend eight years traveling all over the planet. You see, but if you are not in love with the planet, if you are not in love of the Indian communities, you cannot be there because if it's not your story, you cannot do it. But if it is your story, you are part of it. And photography is it. Photography is just a mirror of the society that you are part of. Well, you're also, of course, very well known for your striking monochrome images. How did you come to capture life in that way more in black and white, Sebastian? Well, for me, it was very difficult, always to photograph in color. I love the color photography. I have a very nice, good friends sort of that do amazing color photography, but not me. Me, when I went to photograph, when I'd be photographed something with strong colors as blue, as red, as green, and always I knew that the moment to have the photographic back, these colors, we'd be having a very important impact, visual impact in the image. And for me, it was so disturbing. But when I was photographing black and white, black and white is an abstraction, nothing is in black and white. But for me, going inside this abstraction was possible to transform all colors in different kind of grays. And with this kind of grays was supposed to me to concentrate totally in the subject, in the personality, in the dignity of the people that was photographing, and was for me much more easy. You're often described as a social photographer, but how would you describe yourself? No, I'm not a social photographer. I'm not a former economist photographer. I'm not a photoreporter. Photography is my way of life. Photography is my life. Everything that I do is linked with photography. My wife came inside photography, and I walk in photography all day longer. Now we are preparing these Amazonian books after one year, and back there inside Amazon, just look in my picture, just editing them, that's what's in Peyton, and then preparing the shows. You see, photography is a very powerful language. Just for all these languages that we have that represent the reality, all two languages don't need any translation. That is music and photography. Photography is something very powerful. Sometimes people say, Sebastian, you are an artist. You say, no, I am a photographer. It's a privilege to be a photographer. Photography brings you there. Photography drives you in the most important months of the life of this society that you are part of. Photography resumes your past, resumes your ideology, and resumes the group of people that are in front of you. When we have one photography, this photography has all of this inside. It's not used to do a good photography. It's because this is that I spend a lot of time, I spend years to do a story. How difficult is it sometimes, though, to gain the trust of the subjects, of those that you photograph, and what have been some of your biggest challenges that you can think of so far? Well, probably the biggest challenge that I have in all my life longer is when, in the 90s, I was built on a story about the migration. Because I'm a migrant, I'm a refugee, a story that took me about seven years to photograph the displaced population around the world. And the most difficult months in my life, I live in the former Yugoslavia. I live in the genocide in Rwanda when I lose the hope about my humankind, my peace. In this moment, I was 100% sure that you had, as a space, right to survive. We are so violent. I saw so dramatic moments in my life. I saw so many people die and die by the violence of the others. And that, for me, was very difficult, very, very difficult. In this moment, I was about to abandon photography because I had no more wish to photograph. I abandoned everything. I went back to Brazil. It was exactly this moment that my parents become old. They gave this land to me and to Lele, and that we transformed this land in a national park and we planted forests there. And see these trees grow, better, taking care of my health. These trees was the medicine that I get to become back, to photography, to become back to life. But as you say, you've witnessed some of the worst kinds of worst human atrocities. Did you want to be there and document it to make a difference in the world, to bring the world's attention to them? When you do these stories, you don't do alone these stories. You are just a small part of these stories. And when I was photographing Rwanda, I were not alone. I had a big group of my friend, Photox, a lot of cameramen and a lot of journalists. And we are just a little bit, a small piece of this story. And it's where we are till now. I am now becoming old. And just after the presentation of this big show that we're preparing about Amazonian, I'll be about 80 years old, probably, I'll be too old to go. But that is a replacement generation that is there, walking the same way that I did. And this we continue. This is a need of our society. As I said a few minutes ago, photography is the mirror of the society. And these young photographers, like me, I wear 50 years ago, they are going to do what I did 50 years ago. They will be doing it for me. Sebastian, was it ever difficult when you were photographing these atrocities? Was it sometimes hard to stand back and look through the lens at what you were witnessing? You see, it's very difficult for a photographer. Photographer walks alone. When you are there, you are with yourself, with what you have inside your mind, with your cameras, and some things you don't photograph, some things so hard, that's better to get your cameras put in the ground and cry because it's very difficult, very difficult moments. Some moments you must photograph because you must show what's happening that the things don't have no more. Sometimes people come to your camera like they were come to speak on a microphone. They come to speak to your lens, ask you to do the photograph. I was with big groups of refugees in Africa in many different spaces, many different points in photography, but always alone. In this moment, you need to have a concept, your personal concept of ethics. And what is ethics? Ethics is one for you. It's one different for me, for different for other persons. And in these moments, you must choose what to do, what not to do. It's very difficult, it's very hard for a photographer. It's because this was, I said to you a few minutes ago, I become sick. I was completely sick, it was necessary for me to abandon because I start to die in function of all these violence that they saw enough. And you did go home, as you said, and that's when you created the Instituto Terra organization. And you've told us about what, how the trees will, will make a difference. What else do you want that legacy to be from the planting and replanting? What hope do you have for that? See, when you go to a project like this, you have nothing in mind than plant and trees. We weren't semi-not ecologists. We're just normal people that receive a slice of land, one dead land because the erosion was there also. And I said to Leila, Leila, I will abandon photography. What do you do with this land? And Leila had had the idea, she said about why you do not plant the forest that was here before. She said, why not? That's a fabulous idea. And we started to plant the forest, not just to plant a forest, but planting a forest. You discover that you are creating amazing technology because we had no technology to plant in large scale, the rainforest. We were having this, building this technology. To build this technology was necessary to build a huge nursery. We create one of the biggest nursery of native plants in Brazil. And it was necessary to have technicians in order to build this forest. We create a small school of technicians. And we start, I had a small name in photography. I started to turn in all this planet, apply for money. We are not rich. I'm just a photographer. My wife is just a designer. And we raise money. And we start, we plant it. And today, when we look, we have an amazing forest with monkeys, with jaguars, with more than 170 different pieces of birds. And we have nothing in place, but just a soil with grass for cattle. And today is a fabulous rainforest on it. You see, today, you can say, wow, you had in mind to build all this, we had in mind to build nothing. The things appear with evolution. Build one was necessary to solidificate, to build again, and build again. In a moment, we had something built around that had some sense, some meanings. We had a forest, we had a school, we have a nursery, we have a program to rehabilitation of a full valley. And that came in, is life by life, slowly by life. That is the evolution, that is the story of humanity. What is the story of the humanity? It's the dreamers. The dreamers that materialize, and from this materialized dream, you have a dream again, and you build over a dream, and that is happening, and that keeps going like this. How proud do you think your parents would have been if they could see what it is today? That's a very special question, Tanya, because when I started photography, my father was very upset, and he said to me, Sebastian, to be a photographer was not necessary to go out from here, to make all these studies, go to bars, you stay here and work with local photography in our small town, you'd be a photographer close to us, but slowly by slowly he understand that photography was not just that of a small photography inside a small town in the interior of Brazil. And when we had the land, and we started to plant the forest, my father was also very upset, because the big farmer was supposed to have to us to have thousands of head of cattle, and we abandoned his idea, we get to this land, we created one non-governmental organization, and we gave the land for the non-governmental organization. The land is not ours, and my father was very upset, but when he was really very old, about to die, he came to Lela and me, like guys, you were right. The only thing that was supposed to grow here in this dead soil was the native trees that were here before, and he saw the trees small. I believe that now he'll be very proud to see a fabulous forest in place, what were just a cattle station. And how do you think your years of photographing what you have have changed you or shaped you as a person? You've said and you've talked about that very challenging time when you got sick and you went home, but what other instances, how have they shaped you? You see, we change nothing with what we do. I tell to you a few minutes ago, we are just a small piece inside the system. I believe that my photography is with your text, with your journalism, with the other photographers, with the other writers, with the non-governmental organizations, with all the humanitarian organizations, we participate in a movement. I don't believe that my photography is alone, change anything, but together, they added to change something, I'm sure. And what advice do you have for the next generation? Of course we have mobile phone cameras, now social media, and technology that's changed the way of photography. See, not only for photography, for any kind of things in the life, we are a Gregorian species. We are made to live in group. And the most important concept inside the group is the community, the sense of the community. We are part of a community in solidarity. In any kind of job that we do, any kind of creation that we do, these two variables are the most important side of this model of life, is community in solidarity. And with everything that you've seen so far, do you remain optimistic for our planet? Well, it's very hard to say that I remain optimistic. I saw so many degradation, I saw so many violence. That is very difficult to be optimistic. But to be coherent with all other species, that we are just one species between thousands, probably millions of different species, and that we must accommodate ourselves inside this huge community that is our planet. And if you understand this, we be possible to us to survive as a species. And I have a big hope that we go in that direction, that we can evolve in the direction that we can integrate to our planet. The contrary, the planet we push us out of it. We become just an alien. Like we become to be, we are all humans now. You humans, you live in London, we live in Paris, others live in New York. We are not living in our planet. We are living longer in Paris and New York. We don't understand our system of waters. We don't understand our mountains. We don't understand our jungles. And we must go back to our planet. Not that we believe in our planet, but spiritually, we must go back to the planet and be part of it. Do you think the pandemic will help with that in a way? It'll make humans think about resetting what is important? That is my big hope, that these pandemics bring us the concept of the essential. And essential is not to have a big account in a bank, to have a big account. Essential is to love each other, is to be close of each other, is to be part of this huge human community. And looking back now, what do you think has been your proudest achievement so far? Probably the biggest achievement that I did in all my life long was to love my wife. Loving my wife was possible to me to build anything that I wish in my life. And I believe that it is. And just finally, what would you like your legacy to be? You see, I don't believe in legacy. I don't believe in legacy. Legacy exists after that you are no more here. And legacy is not you that built. It's the people that built for you. We are not here to build a legacy. We're here to live in peace with the community, to live in peace with our planet. And that's it, no more than that. The day that we disappear, we disappear. Other generations come to build other things. But my hope is that what we built, others continue to build and that we can construct a best way to live together. Sebastián Sargada, thank you so much for joining us on the Davos Agenda and many congratulations on winning the Crystal Award. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much and it was my pleasure to be here.