REPORTAGE: Show Sebastiao Salgado

The MAG - 06.23

By Cristina Morozzi

In Milan, at the Fabbrica del Vapore (12/05 to 19/11/2023), the exhibition "Amazzonia" by the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado is underway, which develops around two themes: photographs of landscape settings and pictures of indigenous peoples, promoted and produced by Milano Cultura, Fabbrica del Vapore and Contrasto, curated by Leila Wanick Salgado, Sebastiao's life partner.

The first group of images consists of the sections "Overview of the forest", which represents the Amazon seen from above; “The Flying Rivers,” one of the rainforest's most outstanding and least known features; “Tropical Storms”; "Mountains"; "The forest", once called the green hell and "Island in the river", the archipelago that emerges from the waters of the Rio Negro.

The second group of images is dedicated to the indigenous populations that number only 450 members, considered the most at risk on the planet: from the Yawanawa, who have regained control of their lands and the diffusion of their culture to react to the imminent threat of the disappearance of their ethnicity, up to the Korubo, one of the tribes with the most minor external contacts.

The visit to the exhibition is accompanied by an audio track, specially composed for the exhibition by Jean Miche Jarre, inspired by the authentic sounds of the forest.

In the intentions of Sebastiao Salgado, "the exhibition aims to recreate the atmosphere of the Amazon forest, which he lived and documented, allowing the visitor to immerse themselves in what remains of this immense heritage at risk of extinction".

In 2009 Taschen published an impressive black and white photographic volume which collects the images taken by Sebastiao of the Amazonian forest with its secular trees, our lungs, which the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who would like to cut down to sow in the immense land profitable soybean crops.