The Spectre of Hope: With Sebastiao Salgado and John Berger, and: Migrations, and: The Children: Refugees and Migrants (review)

LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS
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Today there are over 100 million international migrants, a number that has doubled in the span of a decade. The Spectre of Hope video and the photographic collections Migrations and The Children: Refugees and Migrants introduce us to some of these people. Through Sebastião Salgado's masterly photographs we meet peasants, migrant workers, refugees and children from 43 countries, all of whom were displaced when their lives were touched by globalization. The video tells us that few are responsible for their situations, and they do not comprehend how their lives came to their present state. Many see their lives as in transition and perceive their present state as temporary. Understandably, they hope to return to the stable lives they knew before they were displaced. Comprehension is not an easy task for the viewer of the images either. Looking at the faces and circumstances from my armchair in Berkeley, California, it is difficult to perceive how these refugees will once again find "normal" lives and livelihoods. It is not difficult, however, to feel the plight of their lives.

The Spectre of Hope offers a larger perspective on the photographic collections. Through a dialogue between photographer Sebastião Salgado and art critic John Berger, we hear how migration has altered the lives of those we see in the stills as they move across the screen. Salgado's most noteworthy achievement is his ability to remind us that visual imagery changes an abstract idea into an emotional explanation, capable of piercing through to the heart of what life is. Black-and-white photographs accentuate the emotional nature of the presentation and aid Salgado in keeping the focus on the view of globalization he offers. Gathered over 6 years and in countries ranging across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, the photojournalistic collections paint a portrait that includes Rwanda, Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Salgado's native Brazil and elsewhere. When the photographer and the art critic speak about this massive project, in Berger's home in the Swiss Alps, we hear the passion Salgado brought to the making of these images. His words underscore the degree to which he has fulfilled his goal of showing the world those who have not benefited from globalization (which Berger says actually enhances the lives of only one in five on the planet). During their dialogue, Berger aptly exclaims that one feels the word "YES" in Salgado's vision. This is not a yes of approval, but one that recognizes these heart-wrenching situations exist. This photographer's capacity to expose a too-often-obscured side of global reality helps provoke those who look at the pictures to move beyond indifference. Through the still images and the video, we feel the hope of these people from all over the world who are trying to find again a stable position in life, and we add our own hope to it.

Salgado's unparalleled perspective on globalization is strongly rooted in his own history. Born on a farm in the rural state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, he moved to a small town at the age of five, and eventually trained as an economist. Realizing that economic statistics and dry written reports did little to convey the plight of real people, he began to tell their stories with his camera. He now does this with such mastery that it is impossible to convey verbally the degree to...