Photographer's fight to protect paradise

Over almost 60 trips, Sebastiao Salgado recorded the landscapes of the Amazon rainforest and the lives of its inhabitants

- Shintaro Tay

Strapped in a helicopter with a camera pointed at the mountains of the Amazon rainforest, renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado turns to his wife, Lelia Wanick Salgado, and sees tears in her eyes.

"Looking at the dimension of the forest, your eyes don't reach the end of it. It is so moving," he says. "Paradise exists on earth and paradise is in the Amazon."

A decade ago, Salgado was shocked to discover that around 18 per cent of the rainforest had been destroyed due to activities such as illegal logging.

"If you destroy Amazonia, it will be a huge disaster. We are losing biodiversity and the Amazonia depicts the greatest concentration of biodiversity on this planet.

"The Amazon rainforest is full of life and is an important lifeline for our world. It is our shared responsibility to conserve it," adds the former economist.

Salgado, who is 80 and first visited the Amazon around 1984, says he "doubts that there is a person who knows all of the Amazon better" than he does.

Between 2013 and 2019, he made close to 60 trips to document the landscapes and indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

More than 200 of these photos are on display in Amazonia: Photographs By Sebastiao Salgado at the National Museum of Singapore until March 2, 2025.

HAZARDS OF THE RAINFOREST These trips were fraught with danger. Trudging through the treacherous terrain, he fell many times, and once had to undergo surgery for a knee implant.

He also almost lost an eye while running with an indigenous man who was cutting a piece of bamboo. A sharp splinter of bamboo unexpectedly hit him near his eye.

Salgado sought permission from Funai, or the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples, to gain access to indigenous communities in the Amazon - such as the Suruwaha and Yanomami - to document their way of life and traditions.