In the world of awards it is difficult to decide which is the most important. In the world of the arts it is highly contested. And the most curious thing is that the best known, the Nobel Prize, does not give any prize to painters or photographers. To solve it, the Japanese created the Praemium Imperiale, to fill gaps … This year the prize in the Painting category went to the great Sebastiao Salgado.
The Praemium Imperiale International Awards (Takamatsu no miya denka kinen sekai bunka-shō) have been awarded since 1989 for outstanding contributions to the development, promotion and advancement of the arts.
The sections are: Painting (where the photograph comes in), Sculpture, Architecture, Music and Cinema / Theater. And he is endowed with a gold medal and 15 million Japanese yen (€ 125,000).
He is related to the Japanese imperial family and the Japan Art Association with a number of international advisers as relevant as members of the Rockefeller family. An award with an important trajectory that has already awarded photographers such as Cindy Sherman or Hiroshi Sugimoto within that category of Painting.
Sebastiao Salgado receives the Praemium Imperiale award
Sebastiao Salgado will go down in history as one of the great photographers in history. His black and white series take years of work to find the message he wants to convey. He was a coffee economist who fell in love with photography thanks to his wife.
Many times he is accused of being too stylized when it comes to showing the social misfortunes of the world, but it is the only way he has found to give them visibility. The famines, the labor problems of the underprivileged classes, the great miseries of the earth enter the international debate thanks to the visual force it transmits.
The reason for this award is:
Salgado’s work is characterized by an intensity that stems from his patient and empathetic integration into the lives of his subjects. He lives with them, because he believes that “it must be the person in front of you who gives you the photo.” The gift that his subjects make to him is always intensely personal, sometimes distressing, but always revealing of his humanity. Using natural light helps increase the impact of your photos, which often take on an intangible depth and mood.
His figure is better understood since he published his autobiography and especially for the documentary that his son and Wim Wenders made, ‘The Salt of the Earth’, a must-see for all of us who want to take a good photograph.
It is a deserved award, although we will surely find people who will rebel against him for what we have commented. Now we can only wait for the latest project dedicated to the Amazon to arrive in our country and be left with our mouths open.