A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
From "Boyhood" to "Interstellar," some of the biggest movies of 2014 delved into the relationship between parents and their children. But none of them approached the subject quite like the "The Salt of the Earth" which is an Oscar nominee in the 2015 Best Documentary Feature category.
Directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Salgado, the film explores the work of acclaimed photographer and photojournalist Sebastião Salgado—Juliano's father. In many ways, Sebastião's work took precedence in his life, so Juliano set out to understand his father's creative drive, as well as their stunted relationship.
When Juliano came by The Frame, we asked him about criticisms of his father's work, trying to get to know Sebastião while working in the field, and needing to watch interviews to finally get to know his father.
So how did your co-director Wim Wenders contribute to the project?
When Wim came on board, our idea was that he was going to interview Sebastião. My relationship with Sebastião wasn't an easy one — let's put it like that — and Wim was interviewing him about all these memories that he had. It literally had to be somebody else, and the fact that it was Wim was amazing, because he's such a great artist, and he found a way of interview Sebastião that's unique, I think.
You say in the film, "I wanted to find out who that man was." The documentary makes it very clear that your father is absent for very long stretches at a time. Was that part of what you wanted to do in this film, to really try to better understand who your father was?
You're completely right, that's exactly what started me on this project. It was an amazing opportunity to get closer to him, to actually start to have a relationship that wasn't only speaking about amenities, football, soccer and what we're going to have for dinner when we're together.
When I was there with Sebastião, I thought we were really going to meet there, but we didn't, because he was so focused on what he was doing. I actually got to know Sebastião better when I saw Wim's rushes, Wim's footage of interviewing Sebastião about 40 years of traveling, about all these experiences that he's had during those travels, that's when I really got to understand Sebastião.
You keep referring to your father by his first name, which suggests that you kind of see him not directly as your father, but as this person who is separate from your father.
That's right. I mean, the artist, the traveler, the witness of our recent time, that's Sebastião. My father is the guy I'm going to play football with, have dinner, go to the movie together, and those are two different people to me.
When you are growing up, your father's away for long stretches, but as an adult, when you're able to go with him in the field, what were the preconceptions or the ideas you had about what he was doing as a child that were changed by watching him work?
It was more subtle than really a change. His real talent when he makes a photo isn't the great black-and-white that he's able to get, it's not the beautiful composition; I think it's the relationships that he starts with the people that he's only barely meeting, there, in the field. Those relationships are full of emotion, and those emotions are what Sebastião manages to catch, and luckily I saw that when I was filming him.
There's one scene in the film that really amazes me every time I see it: we're there in Papua, we've traveled 300 kilometers in a little airplane, and we're literally in the middle of nowhere in the forests. We have to walk another two days to get to this place. And then, on the way we meet these two guys. They're Papuan, they're dressed as Papuan, which means they have those huge sticks that they put over their penises, and that's it, that's all they wear. We meet with them, we don't speak the same language, but after one minute there's a relation that's starting there, and they start communicating, and that was really amazing.
And you're really talking about something that is at the center of both his work and the detractors of his work, which is the empathy that he has for his subjects. Your father has been accused of making art out of the suffering of others, and I'm curious how you have thought about that, and whether or not you think that is completely unfair criticism of his work?
When you hear his stories, and when you see the reality of his travels, you can never ignore that he's not coming there to take a picture and go away and make money with it. He goes to places to meet people, to understand what's happening. I think that the great thing about his work is that actually as a photographer he's capable of doing something that a radio man would do: he's collecting stories, and he's collecting stories that are not heard by anyone.
When you make a photo, you're responsible with the audience that you're going to show the photo to — the information has to be right and honest — but you also are responsible towards the people that you took the photo of, about telling their story right, about respecting them. And when you see the movie, it's undeniable that Sebastião is the most respectful man you could meet.