BLOG # 7
The coat was of course cloth, where hair stuck through
holes in his hood.. . .toes stuck through his shoes,
hose hung loose, rough mittens with worn out
fingers covered in mud and who himself was
smeared in mud.
Is this a text for the photograph ?. . . . No, a verse from Piers Ploughman, an allegorical poem written in 1370.
Time shifts here.
The photograph was taken in 1986 by Sebastian Salgado yet it looks medieval, 600 years before photography was even invented.
Everything about it seems medieval, the clothes, the primitive shoes, the toil, the multitudes, the hoards, a sense of subjugation, a lack of machinery, chaos. Slavery ? Take a look at the left hand side. Sacks on shoulders, the effort and the struggle. Take a closer look at this spot, a different form of clothing, a uniform, not medieval, but rather a marker for control and restraint, a chain gang ?
What are we seeing here? It’s Sierra Palada, ‘bald mountain’ in Portuguese, ironic maybe, no mountain, only a huge pit.
Here is a gold mine, a primitive gold mine, a 200 m wide hole in the mountain where 50,000 souls sweat and grind in the forlorn hope of finding gold, or the chance of it, hidden deep in that rock and soil. So dig they must, metre by metre, scraping away in search of the dull yellow metal that drives men to abandon their homes, sell their belongings and cross borders to risk life and limb.
The mine is divided up into many thousands of plots owned by a small number of Pioneers. A patchwork of stages, caverns, walkways and vertiginous cliffs. The workers, the Peons move constantly, an army of ants, digging, cleaving, hollowing, burrowing, loading and offloading. Soil and rock in motion.
The sounds of human labour, a constant clamour and pandemonium . Shovels, pickaxes and hammers rapping angrily. A constant tumult, a ceaseless endeavour, a ceaseless struggle. Always shouts in contrition, shouts for territory, shouts in anguish and occasionally in the joy of discovery.
Here, blacks and whites, men of every shade, work shoulder to shoulder. Erstwhile truck drivers, university graduates, bakers, and farm workers, a melange of spirits all imagining instant wealth, gold the only colour on their minds. They labour gouging out the rock and soil, hauling 50 kg sacks up primitive wooden ladders to appear at the crest delivering their precious cargo. Here are men on haunches swilling the muddy water panning for any suggestion of gold. The hope is slim. 99% of all sweated sacks will only be discarded rock and soil.
Mediaeval. Vestiges of feudalism. A classic feudal pyramid. Where Lords held land and power, while serfs exchange the products of the land for the right to work the land. 50,000 and more folk have here created a feudal society in microcosm, a revenant from the dark ages.
By1992 it was all over. 30 tons of gold, worth $400 Million, had been hauled up those ladders.
The gold had run out and many hopes were dashed. While some fortunes were made.
The photograph was taken in 1986 by Sebastian Salgado.
It is part of an extensive photographic essay published as a book entitled Gold by Publisher Tachen
Hi Richard. I was always impressed by not just the pictures, which are great but I think any competent photographer could have taken, but the negotiations and charm and guile and one assumes cash that Salgado had to submit to gain access – but that has always been, I believe, an understated plank of the photographers triumvirate of skills: Framing, Timing… Access. That last one is often the most important.
A quite extraordinary photograph. Looks like something out of Dante. That figure leaning against the post could be Dante. Cor.
Wow! Richard. What a strong piece of writing, your description is really powerful. It made me go back and look again and again at the photograph. Thank you. I loved the factual detail too. I have seen that photograph before but have never spent time looking at it because it is so distressing but your essay forced me too. I loved the contextual information too, it hooked the image into my sense of time and place. Powerful stuff Richard. Thank you!
Image 7 is opened . First glance ,first fleeting thought. “Clever Richard, the trenches, a war photo for D- Day…” but it’s not …of course it’s not, it is unmistakably a Salgado….. I remember the first time that I saw this photo I felt it was a religious inspired piece . For me the Man in the centre carried such strong overtones of a Crucifixion, or a Martyrdom , a St Sebastian type figure without the arrows…this time I am overwhelmingly struck by its links to Heironymous Bosch, a black and white version of his Garden of Earthly Delights…I read what you wrote, and I’m struck by this thought … Bosch and Salgado are surely concerned with the same thing. The central panel of the Bosch depicts a Paradise that deceives the senses, a false Paradise given over to the sin of lust. Salgado’s image deals with his false paradise , driven only by the sin of greed, the belief that gold will be found, and all will be well… but it isn’t . Both images lead to ” Hell”. They say that good images always have an underlying geometry , here, a triangle is clearly formed by the top of the ” Cross” and the man who you mention in uniform on the left… (you often talk about the clothing of the people in your images , its inclusivity or how it sets apart). But I’m not interested in that side of the picture in the least.. No I’m drawn to the smiles on the right. Two people grin, hands are clasped in greeting. Are those 3 young Men , less muddy than the others, striding confidently into “Paradise”, newcomers, full of hope and expectation, meeting someone from family or home? I wonder ….Do you think Salgado is confirming that sense of loyalty, friendship, solidarity, cooperation, support that Man has in the very worst of situations ? and there we are: clever Richard, back to thoughts of D- day and how at the very worst of times, individuals looked out for one another, with a smile or two and the clasped hands of comradeship.