Sebastião Salgado at AMoA [Art Preview]

Sebastião Salgado, bless his heart, trained as an economist. But, after a trip to Africa in the 1970's, he confirmed a fortunate/unfortunate talent for plucking photographic glory from the mundane, and even from the quietly horrific. Wisely, he stuck with it; Salgado is today considered one of the world's best documentary photographers.

The new exhibit at the Austin Museum of Art, Workers, is filled with 62 of his photos. Gathered from Salgado's trips in the 1980's to 23 countries, they represent, in a way, the union of his schooling and his passion: shots of coal miners in India, cocoa farmers in Brazil, machinists in China, fishermen in Italy -- makers-of-livings, all. They don't show how money moves, as much as how it starts.

It can start uncomfortably. Each photograph in Workers carries a tension between dignity and servitude. Which illustrates, of course, that the yo-yo thing about life is the yo-yo thing about photography: it's two things at once. Salgado consciously reveals -- and condemns -- how much of the world’s work force "still labors to make goods they cannot afford." Yet he manages to celebrate the effort in such arresting black and white.

Workers runs through February 8th at the Austin Museum of Art