Black and white photography is impactful, powerful, timeless.
Its creations convey deep messages, deep meaning and deep beauty.
It is at the same time simple and complex, raw and refined.
It is beautiful.
I love to visit exhibitions about black and white photography, especially by photographers who made this discipline their speciality.
Sebastião Salgado is one of them.
Salgado is a very talented photographer whose exclusively black and white photos are not only gorgeous but also meaningful.
I have written several articles in my blog about Salgado’s work, and exhibitions of him that I visited.
Last September, I was thrilled to visit a new exhibition of him at the Philharmonie de Paris, entitled Amazônia.
But let’s start by the beginning.
The Philharmonie de Paris is an impressive building with an outstanding architecture, this place is dedicated to music in all its forms and styles.
The exhibition Amazônia was beautifuly displayed in this place and the photos of Salgado presented in this exhibition were accompanied by a music creation of Jean-Michel Jarre that reproduced the atmosphere and the sounds of Amazônia.
This exhibition was thus original thanks to both its visual and auditive experience.
The exhibition Amazônia was, as its name states, centered on Amazônia and on its inhabitants.
Through its 200 photos, this exhibition showed the beauty of the Brazilian Amazônia – from its trees, its rivers, its mountains to its animals and its inhabitants – that Salgado observed through his lens during 7 years.
The pictures that he took are gorgeous and breathtaking, especially the aerial ones and the ones with haze.
They present nature as it is : strong, complex and wonderful – and they also show that nature needs to be protected.
Furthermore, the black and white contrasts used in the photos add a lot of depth and meaning to the details of the elements showed in the pictures.
But beyond being a striking exhibition, this exhibition made us discover a little piece of this rich and beautiful natural place that is Amazônia.
For more about black and white photography, visit my Pinterest board dedicated to it.
