The Medicine:

The eye of Sebastião Salgado

Yanomami people from Maturaca village look at the sacred Yaripo – or Pico da Neblina – mountain, the highest in Brazil, in 2014. Photograph: Sebastião Salgado/NBpictures.com

In my last post, Desperate Acts of Imagination, May 17, 2025, Martin and I had an exchange after I, with much pain and thought, posted films of CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador to which immigrants have been sent illegally. I have learned since that the images from CECOT are indeed staged, but nevertheless they are not less true and the staging, in my mind, adds a vicious aspect to them and so increasingly I think we need to be aware of what is being done in our name. So many turn away … but the prisoners can’t.

This is some of what Martin and I said to each other. I do not know him beyond the words exchanged on the Comments in the other posting. I have continued to contemplate what he has said, wondering if this is one of the occasions, as one of the participants in the writing intensive was considering today — ( I am teaching now, writing while they are writing )— when sometimes one does harm by describing harm?

From the exchange:

Martin

… When we have no social power in a horror, we most often delude ourselves by arrogating that violent and destructive power to being within our control.

We as onlookers could not stop the holocaust in Gaza, not even with a heightened power of knowledge. We as civilians cannot get these men out of El Salvador. We cannot save the women condemned either to death from forced birth or to endless suffering from being unable to provide a decent life to their forced birth children.

To mix a 60s metaphor, we don’t need photos to know which way the wind blows. We don’t need snuff films or staged prison photos to know the very real mass murder being done by powerful entities in our name. Social reality is beyond awful, and while awareness is valuable, so is disavowal.

Deena Metzger

Dear Martin: I hear you and have been thinking about what you are saying. My fear is that this is not staged. So the question i will carry is, does showing such images even though I do not in any way think they are the equivalent of snuff films, which like so much media were designed to titillate, add to the neutralization of horror and suffering? Or does looking at these images and not looking away as so many would like to do so they don't get upset and can live their lives despite others' suffering, does facing such images, which are real, even as they say they are staged, the staging is real, which people are suffering this moment, bring us to self scrutiny about our values, about the rabid individualism, for example, that is part of what leads to this, and the fear of 'the other' and hierarchy, might it get us to ask how our life styles created the conditions in their countries ( and ours) so that they had to leave, why do they have no alternative but gang activity, if if if some of them were part of that .... why why why. To establish change one doesn't have to engage in a great action and see a great result, but individuals living and thinking differently will coalesce, or can coalesce into other ways of being. My hope at least. Interesting, is it not, that this exchange, ostensibly about difference between us, also reveals an alliance. I will be considering what you are saying .... i do, personally, hold the ordinary familiar media writers responsible in part for this horror, by depending on depicting violence, those who write films and shows, those 'good people' who brought us here in pursuit of their livings and 'success. I do not want to fall into a similar situation of inadvertently adding to the violence in the world rather than doing what i can to make such untenable. Again, thank you so much for thinking and writing.

***

This particular photo by Salgado who just died is, for me, one of the great photos of all time. It is what he came to after spending so many years of life photographing, bearing witness, documenting war, and the great suffering of humans and the devastation of Earth. This photo shows us human beings in the presence of the Holy. In the presence of the Holy and recognizing the existence of the Holy. The sacred mountain. We are ourselves, if we allow it, transported as well into the dimension where the Divine comes to meet us, allows us into the field of its being.

As medicine for brutal torture, as the antidote for the viciousness of our culture, here is Salgado’s remarkable vision. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in a statement. “Salgado didn’t only use his eyes and his camera to portray people: he also used the fullness of his soul and heart.”

May your life be restored by Salgado’s spirit: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2024/feb/08/i-photographed-the-world-the-art-of-sebastiao-salgado-in-pictures?CMP=share_btn_link

*********************************************************************************

I have been freely offering my writing to the community for 60 years and posting essays on Substack since January 2022. If you can support the work with a paid subscription or an intermittent donation and / or recommend it to your friends and colleagues, it will be greatly appreciated. (It helps the work circulate if you share or leave a comment and check ‘like,’ when you do.)