Other Americas. Sebastião Salgado's great photography on display in Otranto.

The Sebastião Salgado exhibition in the rooms of the Aragonese Castle in Otranto, curated by Lélia Wanick Salgado, promoted by the Municipality of Otranto and organized by Contrasto, is on until November 2. Other Americas (that’s the title) is an exhibition hitherto unseen in Italy, and is the first major photographic project made by Sebastião Salgado, when after years of living in Europe, he decided to return to know and recognize his homeland, Brazil and Latin America. Armed with a camera, in his many travels between 1977 and 1984, he covered an entire continent trying to capture, in his mellow and theatrical black and white, the essence of a land and the reason for a long cultural tradition. The result is a powerful body of images evoking the value of a continent, its economy, its religiosity and the persistence of peasant and Indian cultures.

As Salgado himself stated, “when I began this work, in 1977, [...] my only desire was to return to my home, to that beloved Latin America [...]. Armed with a whole arsenal of chimeras, I decided to dive into the heart of that unreal universe, of these Latin Americas so mysterious, suffering, heroic and full of nobility. This work lasted seven years, or rather seven centuries, for me, because I was going back in time.”

“We are truly happy to host an exhibition by Sebastião Salgado, who is considered one of the world’s greatest contemporary photographers,” says Pierpaolo Cariddi, mayor of Otranto. “A keen observer of what he calls the ’human family.’ For years around the world narrating, through his shots, stories of peoples and a planet often battered. His black-and-white photos show his life project and document the environmental, economic and political changes of recent decades. Visitors will certainly appreciate the shots of the Brazilian photographer who has made his work a mission. Despite the fact that the last two years have put us under a lot of strain, we have nevertheless always ensured quality exhibitions in the Castello Aragonese,” Mayor Cariddi continued, "a cultural container that has now become the beating heart of our city, a cultural center that hosts events, initiatives, and installations of international level every year.

On display in Otranto, for the first time 65 works in three different formats. The intensity of the black and white photographs, their plastic power, confirmed for the whole world the birth of a great photographer and a storyteller of our time: Sebastião Salgado.

As Alan Riding, of the New York Times said, “Salgado’s photographs capture from time to time the light and darkness of heaven and existence, the tenderness and feeling that coexist with harshness and cruelty. Salgado has gone in search of a forgotten corner of the Americas, erecting it as a prism through which the continent as a whole can be observed. [...] Salgado is the creator of an archive, the keeper of a world, whose isolation he celebrates. In doing so, he aims to elicit problematic and contradictory emotions. And in this case, too, he succeeds fully.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a book published by Contrasto.

For all information, you can call +39 0836 210094.

Pictured: Sebastião Salgado, Guatemala (1978).

Other Americas. Sebastião Salgado's great photography on display in Otranto.

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