“I saw in this camp sometimes dying per day 10,000 people,” says Sebastiao Salgado in Paul Carlin’s 2000 documentary The Spectre of Hope. “And it’s difficult to see 10,000 people die. It’s very hard. They were dying because we had not any way to save them.” As he speaks, the Brazilian economist turned award-winning photographer holds a 1994 print depicting a Rwandan refugee dying of cholera at a camp in Zaire. A crowd surrounds the crumpled figure on the bare ground, looking on helplessly.
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Salgado’s photos of refugees, migrants, and exiles make a viewer feel a lot like one of those impotent onlookers. Two hundred fifty-six such pictures–shot in 31 different countries–are now on display in the encyclopedic exhibit “Sebastiao Salgado–Migrations: Humanity in Transition” at the Chicago Cultural Center and the Harold Washington Library Center. His eloquent, detailed images chart the movements of the world’s 100 million displaced people and raise confounding questions: Who or what has caused all this motion and the unimaginable misery that accompanies it?
“Sebastiao Salgado–Migrations: Humanity in Transition” and “The Children,” his related series of large-format portraits of young refugees, are up in the Cultural Center’s Exhibit Hall and Sidney R. Yates Gallery, 78 E. Washington, and in the Harold Washington Library Center’s Main Gallery, 400 S. State, through September 28. Call 312-744-6630 for more information.
