Legendary photographer Sebastião Salgado dies at 82

Sebastião Salgado, regarded as one of the world's greatest documentary photographers, has died at the age of 82.

The Brazil-born photographer was known for his dramatic and unflinching black-and-white images of hardship, conflict and natural beauty, captured in 130 countries over 55 years.

His hard-hitting photos chronicled major global events such as the Rwanda genocide in 1994, burning oilfields at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and the famine in the Sahel region of Africa in 1984.

"His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, the power of transformative action," said a statement from his Instituto Terra.

Some of his most striking pictures were taken in his home country, including epic photos of thousands of desperate figures working in open-cast gold mines and striking images of the indigenous people of the Amazon.

Through the Instituto Terra, his environmental non-profit, Salgado and his wife Lélia also restored his barren former family farm in Brazil to thriving rainforest.

The statement added: "Sebastião was much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time.

"Alongside his life partner, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, he sowed hope where there was devastation and brought to life the belief that environmental restoration is also a profound act of love for humanity."

Salgado's later projects included working with 12 indigenous communities to create the Amazonia exhibition, which was displayed at the Science Museum in London and the the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester in 2021 and 2022.

He received the Sony World Photography Awards' Outstanding Contribution to Photography in 2024.

"Sometimes I ask myself, "Sebastião, was it really you that went to all these places?"' he said to an interviewer last year.

"Was it really me that spent years travelling to 130 different countries, who went deep inside the forests, into oil fields and mines? Boy, it really is me who did this. I'm probably one of the photographers who's created the most work in the history of photography."