God.
Salgado makes the most boring pictures of the most amazing subject matter. It
really is an amazing skill, one only matched by the master of bland, Edward
Burtynsky. Salgado goes to the most dramatic places on earth and then, through
overly romanticized, high contrast images, produces work that is so similar to
every photojournalist picture ever that they become endlessly clichéd art. His
inability to resist making a Salgado out of everything ends up completely
removing the viewer from the event being photographed. He could make a dull
picture of the return of Christ to reunite Genesis while having sex with Phil
Collins on an iceberg. He is a black hole of photographic charisma.
I
might be the wrong audience, being a photographer who sees lots of pictures and
all, but I can’t remember ever being motivated to do anything political from
seeing a picture. Reading an article sure, seeing documentaries, movies, hell,
TV, but I've never opened a magazine or art book and seen a picture that
motivated me to give to a cause or volunteer or go to a protest, nothing. I
think photographs can be helpful tools in assisting in the communicating of an
idea, but on their own they are pretty unconvincing. So to wrap
up, Salgado is a terribly dull photographer whose life’s work has been to
assist others with better tools, change public opinion. Also, I am gonna be very
angry if the Oscar for documentaries goes to the film about Salgado rather than
to Virunga, the touching movie about park rangers caring for mountain
gorillas during a civil war in Congo (which got me to donate to assist the
maintenance of the park).
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