Sebastião Salgado (born February 8, 1944, Aimorés, Brazil—died May 23, 2025, Paris, France) was a Brazilian photojournalist whose dramatic black-and-white works powerfully express the beauty and destruction of the planet, the diversity of humanity, and the suffering of the impoverished. Salgado was the only son of a cattle rancher who wanted him to become a lawyer. Instead, he studied economics at São Paulo University, earning a master’s degree in 1968. While working as an economist for the Ministry of Finance (1968–69), he joined the popular movement against Brazil’s military government. Seen as a political radical, Salgado was exiled in August 1969. He and his wife fled to France, where he continued his studies at the University of Paris. In 1971, while on an assignment in Rwanda as an economist for the International Coffee Organization, he took his first photographs and soon decided to teach himself the craft. He became a freelance photojournalist in 1973.