74 Quotes by Sebastião Salgado

We are one human race, and there must be understanding among all men. For those who look at the problems of today, my big hope is that they understand. That they understand that the population is quite big enough, that they must be informed that they must have economic development, that they must have social development, and must be integrated into all parts of the world.

I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.

Photography is full of symbolism, it's a symbolic language. You have to be able to materialize all your thoughts in one single image.

I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It's very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it's there and it's not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love - all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there.

I'm not an artist. An artist makes an object. Me, it's not an object, I work in history, I'm a storyteller.

More than ever, I feel that the human race is one. There are differences of colour, language, culture and opportunities, but people's feelings and reactions are alike. People flee wars to escape death, they migrate to improve their fortunes, they build new lives in foreign lands, they adapt to extreme hardship….

I don't believe a person has a style. What people have is a way of photographing what is inside them. What is there comes out.

In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.

It's more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera