Salgado’s Leica

Autoportrait, Brussels, 1996.

Salgado’s Leica

It was for a TV documentary, a long time ago; I had seen Sebastião Salgado hard at work, with two cameras, three lenses, and that was it. Like a warrior, he manoeuvered with supple grace, cutting up pieces of the world around him with his cameras as if they were two swords. He hardly paid attention to his camera bodies, they simply obeyed him as would devoted servants. This spoke to me. I found a second-hand camera, a Leica R6.2 with a 50mm lens, then another then two more lenses. Fully manual, no automatic setting, total control, and Leitz lenses, exceptional for black and white. Thirty years later, the Franco-Brazilian master has changed cameras, not me.