The Salt of the Earth

Sebastião Salgado has been witness to the worst suffering and most breathtaking beauty of man and earth. As a reporter, the Brazilian photographer experienced the protests by exploited workers in Latin America. He crossed the Sahel with starving refugees and documented the genocide in Rwanda. He has exposed himself to human catastrophes for over 40 years in order to capture them with his camera and make them public. The struggle for dignity in an inhumane environment runs like a thread through his work. Wim Wenders discovered the extraordinary beauty of Salgado’s photographs as early as the 1980s. Together with the photographer’s son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, Wenders has now made a film that not only pays homage to Salgado’s work, but also reminds us of what it means to be a human being on this earth.