Sebastiao Salgado. Amazonia Touch

Feel these photographs with the tips of your fingers: Amazônia Touch was created by Sebastião Salgado, Lélia Wanick Salgado, and VISIO Foundation for blind or visually impaired people: a box containing 21 three-dimensional tactile "transcriptions" of 18 photographs and 3 geographical maps from Salgado's latest book Amazônia – a tactile experience. Tactile TranscriptionsSebastião Salgado’s Amazônia images in touching detailFor seven years, Sebastião Salgado traveled throughout the Brazilian Amazonian biome photographing the rainforest, the clouds, the rivers, the mountains, and the native people who live there. His book Amazônia shows this deep universe – where the immense power of nature is like no other that can be felt on the planet – and is an invitation to contemplate those human and environmental factors that are crucial to our planet and call for protection of the eco-system and of Indigenous peoples of the region.Together with the French VISIO Foundation, Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado created an exceptional project for blind or visually impaired children and adults: Amazônia Touch, a box with 21 three-dimensional tactile "transcriptions" of 18 photographs and 3 geographical maps from Salgado's book Amazônia. These relief images are produced with brass plates, using an ancient embossing and stamping technique on Pachica paper. For the first time, it is possible to feel the power of Salgado's photographs with the tips of the fingers. The 21 relief plates are accompanied by a brochure presenting the 18 photos and the 3 maps with English, French and Brazilian texts and the access to audio descriptions of the works, which are accessible online by connecting to the website https://culture.fondation-visio.org.The photographer and authorSebastião Salgado began his career as a professional photographer in Paris in 1973 and subsequently worked with the photo agencies Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos. In 1994, he and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado created Amazonas Images, which is today their studio, and exclusively handles his work. Salgado’s photographic projects have been featured in many exhibitions as well as books, including Sahel. L’Homme en détresse (1986), Other Americas (1986), Terra(1997), Migrations (2000), The Children (2000), Africa (2007), Genesis (2013), The Scent of a Dream (2015), Kuwait. A Desert on Fire (2016), and Gold (2019). He is a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts and has received numerous international awards, such as the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (2019) and the Praemium Imperiale (2021).The editorLélia Wanick Salgado studied architecture and urban planning in Paris. Her interest in photography started in 1970. In the 1980s, she began to conceive and design the majority of Sebastião Salgado’s photography books and all of the exhibitions of his work.