Galeano On Salgado: 3

From Eduardo Galeano's "Salgado, 17 Times":

3. This world is so sad that the rainbows come out in black and white and so ugly that the vultures fly upside down after the dying. A song is sung in Mexico:

Se va la vida por el agujero
Como la mugre por el lavadero
[Life goes down the drain
Like dirt in the sink]

And in Colombia they say: El costo de la vida sube y sube y el valor de la vida baja y baja. [The more the cost of living goes up the less life is worth.]

But light is a secret buried under the garbage and Salgado's photographs tell us that secret.

The emergence of the image from the waters of the developer, when the light becomes forever fixed in shadow, is a unique moment that detaches itself from time and is transformed into forever. These photographs will live on after their subjects and their author, bearing testimony to the world's naked truth and hidden splendor. Salgado's camera moves about the violent darkness, seeking light, stalking light. Does the light descend from the sky or rise out of us? That instant of trapped light, that gleam in the photographs reveals to us what is unseen, what is seen but unnoticed; an unperceived presence, a powerful absence. It shows us that concealed within the pain of living and the tragedy of dying there is a potent magic, a luminous mystery that redeems the human adventure in the world.