Holden Luntz Gallery - 02.08.2022

Sebastião Salgado’s Workers: An Archeology of the Industrial Age

A turbaned coal worker with a pickax on one shoulder stares directly into the camera on the cover of Sebastião Salgado’s 400 page, extraordinary book titled, Workers: An Archeology of the Industrial Age. The men in the photograph are coal miners from the Dhanbad region in Bihar, India, and were photographed by Salgado in 1989 as part of his Workers series where, over a period of six years beginning in 1986, the acclaimed photo-journalist traveled through many continents photographing on the theme of manual labor. The book, which reflects the worsening conditions of communities neglected by governments also pays tribute to the human conditions, and those who tirelessly work with their hands with dignity, at the core of modern civilization. His moving, often unsettling, perspective shifting images of life on Earth tell profound truths in both beautifully aestheticized and raw ways.