Blackness in Black and White: Serra Pelada and Sebastião Salgado

Since their publication in Sunday Times Magazine in 1987, the photographs of the biblically sized Serra Pelada gold mine in northern Brazil by Sebastião Salgado have garnered an emphatically positive reception. In “Blackness in Black and White: Sebastião Salgado and Serra Pelada,” I argue there is a system of racial coding in his photographs of the Serra Pelada gold mine, which has received little attention in the photographic discourse. I examine the photographs in dialogue with visual histories of enslavement and the exploitation of black bodies in 19th century Brazil and the United States, and the complexities of racial identity and hierarchy in late 20th century Brazil. Through this analysis, I also highlight blind spots in the English-language discourse on Salgado’s gold photographs, which seek to both universalize their themes and aestheticize their content, as well as challenge his own characterization of the photographs. My primary objective is not to argue that Salgado’s photographic decisions, which were made manifest in this systemization, were premeditated, but rather to assert its presence within the photographs and in doing so, offer a more politically and culturally nuanced and specific analysis of the photographs.