Sebastiao Salgado

"Terra: Struggle of the Landless" was his fourth project, and it showed the men and women in Brazil fighting to reclaim their native land. "Terra" was followed by the Migrations Project, which culminated with his book "Migrations and The Children," an illustration of the "plight of displaced persons, refugees and immigrants in over forty countries" (kjjljl, 90). Although Salgado's work is linked together like different chapters of the same story, the Migrations Project stands out as the most extraordinary of all, for it conveys the idea of "the physical and personal journey of those who migrate, and contribute to the reorganization of humankind" (kkhkhlk,98). The three most impressive photographs of "Migrations" are "The Swollen Cities, The Tiete Bus Terminal, and Girl of Serra Pelada." Those photographs must be analyzed in their meaning, purpose and quality in order to better understand the nature of Salgado's work, as well as his artistic style. .
             Salgado's photograph "The Swollen Cities" (page 8) shows only a few of the four hundred babies at a child welfare facility in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The underlying story of the photograph is that of abandoned children, whose future consists of going from one orphanage to another, until they reach the age of eighteen. In a city like Sao Paulo, where millions of hopeful people come to find a better job, these abandoned babies are thrown in the urban environment without any guidance. Unable to support an infant, mothers leave behind their babies to have a better chance at making a living, believing that once hired, they will be able to come back for their babies. These children eventually grow up to be "street children," roaming the "selected" residential areas to the poorer outskirts of the city. If unaware, one could even think they come from spontaneous generations of street children who spring out of the gutters, without noticing that in most cases they are the children of immigrant families from the countryside.