Workers

Sebastião Salgado's Workers is an elegy to the manual laborers of the industrial age in the fields of agriculture, mining, oil, construction, food and industry. Salgado's powerful images of tea pickers in Rwanda, dam builders in India, steelworkers in France and the Ukraine, sugarcane harvesters in Brazil, assembly-line workers in Russia and China, sulfur miners in Indonesia and others pay moving tribute to the working people who, in Salgado's portrayal, have maintained their dignity under the harshest of conditions. Made over a period of six years, the 250 photographs comprising the series were first exhibited in 1993; for this publication, the project's original curator, Lelia Wanick Salgado, has narrowed the selection down to 81 photographs. A classic photobook, Workers offers an affirmation of the enduring spirit of working women and men.