What do you think?
Rate this book
Terra
"Because death belongs to all, so too should life," observes Portuguese writer José Saramago in a preface to this remarkable volume of black-and-white images. But death is easy and life is hard in Sebastião Salgado's native Brazil, where exploitation of labor and mechanization of agriculture have combined to paint a bleak future for the country's rural population. Even the faces of small children are clouded with despair in this book, which is at once a testament to human courage and a powerful argument for agrarian reform--a long-promised and long-delayed reform that has led to a bloody struggle to take possession of unused land in private hands.
Paperback
First published April 1, 1997
1 person is currently reading
139 people want to read
About the author
Sebastião Salgado
80 books189 followersSebastião Ribeiro Salgado Júnior was a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist.
He traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and books. Touring exhibitions of his work have been presented throughout the world.
Salgado was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in 1982, Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992; and the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in 1993. He was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts at the Institut de France since April 2016.
He traveled in over 120 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and books. Touring exhibitions of his work have been presented throughout the world.
Salgado was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in 1982, Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992; and the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in 1993. He was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts at the Institut de France since April 2016.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 27, 2018
It's not easy to review a book full of photographs, so I will keep this short and sweet. This is an extraordinary work. Full of breathtaking imagery, it's powerful, it's beautiful, it's harsh. Terra tells the story in photos of the forced migration of the Brazilian peasants and their struggle to survive in the face of the worse kind of poverty. This is perfect andidote to the meaningless images that are thrust before our eyes on a daily basis in our modern lives. Salgado shows us the rich world and how the majority of our brothers and sisters live. The grinding poverty is just terrible, but the heroic strength of the human spirit is not broken. The stares on the faces of Salgado's subjects are simply impossible to forget. Salgado is not just a great artist, he truly cares for life, and feels he has a duty to be a witness to injustice and the immense human suffering that is its consequence. This work is rather on the short side, but the imagery within is off the scale as to just how good it is.
December 18, 2019
É um livro que trazem fotos de Sebastião salgado, introdução de Saramago e versos de Chico Buarque. Retrata o Brasil entre os anos 80 e 90.
Achei de uma delicadeza ímpar a forma que Sebastião Salgado retrata a vida dura de garimpeiros, sem terra, crianças e a miséria que essas pessoas estão inseridas. Apesar de ser um trabalho de décadas atrás, se faz bem atual no contexto histórico que estamos atravessando.
Achei de uma delicadeza ímpar a forma que Sebastião Salgado retrata a vida dura de garimpeiros, sem terra, crianças e a miséria que essas pessoas estão inseridas. Apesar de ser um trabalho de décadas atrás, se faz bem atual no contexto histórico que estamos atravessando.
March 11, 2019
Several years ago at a conference on liberation theology at Maryknoll, my wife, Mev Puleo, asked the noted Salvadoran theologian Jon Sobrino how she could respond to the growing misery of the Third World. A photojournalist, she was also pursuing a master's degree in theology. Sobrino's response: "We don't just need liberation theologians. We need liberation photographers, liberation teachers, liberation accountants." His words were a stimulus to my wife -- there was plenty of vital work for a photographer to do.
This new book by Sebastião Salgado reminds me of Sobrino's inclusive vision. I'd even say that Salgado is a "liberation photographer" in that he has made a preferential option for the poor -- in the present case, the landless masses of Brazil.
Who is he? Sebastião Salgado is an engaged photographer, one who carries on the grand tradition of social documentary photography exemplified by people such as Eugene Smith and Dorothea Lange. A Brazilian, Salgado was forced to leave his homeland in the late 1960s, a time of great violence under the military dictatorship. He now lives as an expatriate in Paris.
While in his 20s, Salgado left his career as an economist and took up photography. He has since been documenting the lives, sufferings and struggles of workers and refugees in the Third World. It is this world of oppression, hunger and violence that Salgado has captured with his camera. He brings back images that stir the heart and prick the conscience.
The present book, covering a 15-year period in Brazil, is divided into five sections: The People of the Land, The Workers of the Land, The Force of Life, Migrations to the City, and The Struggle for the Land. The photos express the heartbreak of life for Brazil's poor.
Well over four million Brazilians are without land, while much arable land lies unattended or is wasted in comparatively unprofitable cattle-ranching. On the great estates, or latifundios, hired gunmen are used to deter the landless peasants from occupying plots of land in an effort to survive. Also, with deforestation proceeding apace, droughts are more frequent, hunger increases and people flee the rural areas for employment in big cities, especially São Paulo, which is one of the most immense metropolises in the world.
Salgado's black-and-white photographs reveal the arduous lives and struggles of Brazil's poor workers: the sugar cane laborers, the gold miners, the cattle hands and the cotton-plantation workers. He presents numerous portraits of children whose lives have already been marked by dispossession and death. In one market, the viewer sees for sale not only fruits and vegetables but coffins hanging on the wall. In fact, the poor are too poverty-stricken even to afford them. They borrow coffins from a church and use them for wakes and transporting the deceased to the burial ground; after the body is buried, the coffins are reused. The poignant rituals of grieving and honoring the dead are also featured in Salgado's photographs of the 19 people who were gunned down by military police during a demonstration in April 1996.
But in many of these photographs, we receive a sense of the Brazilians' heroic tenacity: wedding celebrations in the midst of desolate land, a base community praying before an occupation attempt, and the results of victorious land occupations that enable the people to feed their families. Indeed, this book was published this past April to coincide with the International Day of Struggle for the Land. Terra gives dramatic testimony to the amazing resourcefulness and courage of poor people who have become organized into an impressive grassroots movement for social change.
In the back of the book, Salgado provides captions with historical background and political analysis to help the viewer understand the stakes of the struggle. The Portuguese writer José Saramago also contributes a sardonic and moving preface in which he writes of God's mistakes and humanity's -- especially the latter's creation of private property.
The Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh once offered counsel that calls to mind Salgado's project: "Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contacts and visits, images and sound. By such means awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world."
Salgado's personal contact with the suffering world of the landless is creatively and constructively presented in this book. Terra can serve to awaken those of us in middle-class America to a world in which the simple things we so easily take for granted are the source of life-and-death agitation. From his own immersion in the misery and struggle for change in Brazil. Salgado confronts us with a painful, though potentially liberating, truth: the homeless and unemployed of the United States and the landless of Brazil are stirring reminders that the capitalist economic system fails, again and again.
Thus there's plenty of suffering to respond to, and there's a lot of work to be done by liberation photographers, accountants, farmers, teachers, painters, spiritual directors, therapists, journalists and plumbers.
--Fall 1997
This new book by Sebastião Salgado reminds me of Sobrino's inclusive vision. I'd even say that Salgado is a "liberation photographer" in that he has made a preferential option for the poor -- in the present case, the landless masses of Brazil.
Who is he? Sebastião Salgado is an engaged photographer, one who carries on the grand tradition of social documentary photography exemplified by people such as Eugene Smith and Dorothea Lange. A Brazilian, Salgado was forced to leave his homeland in the late 1960s, a time of great violence under the military dictatorship. He now lives as an expatriate in Paris.
While in his 20s, Salgado left his career as an economist and took up photography. He has since been documenting the lives, sufferings and struggles of workers and refugees in the Third World. It is this world of oppression, hunger and violence that Salgado has captured with his camera. He brings back images that stir the heart and prick the conscience.
The present book, covering a 15-year period in Brazil, is divided into five sections: The People of the Land, The Workers of the Land, The Force of Life, Migrations to the City, and The Struggle for the Land. The photos express the heartbreak of life for Brazil's poor.
Well over four million Brazilians are without land, while much arable land lies unattended or is wasted in comparatively unprofitable cattle-ranching. On the great estates, or latifundios, hired gunmen are used to deter the landless peasants from occupying plots of land in an effort to survive. Also, with deforestation proceeding apace, droughts are more frequent, hunger increases and people flee the rural areas for employment in big cities, especially São Paulo, which is one of the most immense metropolises in the world.
Salgado's black-and-white photographs reveal the arduous lives and struggles of Brazil's poor workers: the sugar cane laborers, the gold miners, the cattle hands and the cotton-plantation workers. He presents numerous portraits of children whose lives have already been marked by dispossession and death. In one market, the viewer sees for sale not only fruits and vegetables but coffins hanging on the wall. In fact, the poor are too poverty-stricken even to afford them. They borrow coffins from a church and use them for wakes and transporting the deceased to the burial ground; after the body is buried, the coffins are reused. The poignant rituals of grieving and honoring the dead are also featured in Salgado's photographs of the 19 people who were gunned down by military police during a demonstration in April 1996.
But in many of these photographs, we receive a sense of the Brazilians' heroic tenacity: wedding celebrations in the midst of desolate land, a base community praying before an occupation attempt, and the results of victorious land occupations that enable the people to feed their families. Indeed, this book was published this past April to coincide with the International Day of Struggle for the Land. Terra gives dramatic testimony to the amazing resourcefulness and courage of poor people who have become organized into an impressive grassroots movement for social change.
In the back of the book, Salgado provides captions with historical background and political analysis to help the viewer understand the stakes of the struggle. The Portuguese writer José Saramago also contributes a sardonic and moving preface in which he writes of God's mistakes and humanity's -- especially the latter's creation of private property.
The Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh once offered counsel that calls to mind Salgado's project: "Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contacts and visits, images and sound. By such means awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world."
Salgado's personal contact with the suffering world of the landless is creatively and constructively presented in this book. Terra can serve to awaken those of us in middle-class America to a world in which the simple things we so easily take for granted are the source of life-and-death agitation. From his own immersion in the misery and struggle for change in Brazil. Salgado confronts us with a painful, though potentially liberating, truth: the homeless and unemployed of the United States and the landless of Brazil are stirring reminders that the capitalist economic system fails, again and again.
Thus there's plenty of suffering to respond to, and there's a lot of work to be done by liberation photographers, accountants, farmers, teachers, painters, spiritual directors, therapists, journalists and plumbers.
--Fall 1997
October 22, 2025
Sterke fotografier!
August 19, 2008
This one's on my want list. It's a hit coffee table book in Brazil that reads as an illustrated how-to of taking over disused and misused land by and for landless workers. Salgado's photos are so powerful they are capable of inducing buckets of tears that are a soup of sorrow and joy and inspiration all at once (like the Brazilian emotion of saudade that is almost inexplicable to anyone who doesn't speak Portuguese) just like the story of the MST—the Movement of Landless Workers for whom this book pays tribute.
December 9, 2008
It's amazing to me that slavery still exists, but it's so far away we don't even recognize it. Whether it's Brazil or Morrocco you're talking about, it's all the same. And it seems to center around not getting paid enough for all their hard work. Especially when other's get paid a whole lot of dough to sit at a desk and be comfortable. Doesn't seem fair. But that's no new news...just me pondering.
May 27, 2011
Absolutely amazing. These photographs are some of the best I've ever seen. Chico Buarque's poems are beautiful additions to an already incredible collection of photographs documenting the struggle of the landless in Brazil. Salgado, in my opinion, is one of the world's most talented photographers in all realms: technically, artistically, humanistically. I'm in awe.
January 29, 2008
The world's greatest photographer, focusing on the struggles of one of the world's greatest social movements (and in black & white, even better!)... it's breathtaking and well worth purchasing so you can look at it over & over.
July 11, 2011
Salgado è uno dei misteri della fotografia moderna. Osannato come maestro, personalmente ho avuto possibilità di conoscere fotografi molto più bravi (e modesti).
December 7, 2013
Dos livros que eu li dele, me pareceu o único feito às pressas. Os outros me parecem mais densos, porém, se eu não os tivesse como referência, a avaliação deste também teria 5 estrelas.
September 2, 2013
Salgado is amazing !!!
I follow his work for a long time .
Very proud of him !
I follow his work for a long time .
Very proud of him !
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews