© jmse
By José Manuel Serrano Esparza
In mid March of 1991,
Sebastiao Salgado phoned Kathy Ryan (Picture Editor of the Sunday illustrated
magazine of The New York Times) to suggest her going to Kuwait to make a
photographic essay covering the grueling struggle of firefighters from many
countries to extinguish the roughly 700 oil wells that Saddam Hussein´s troops
had set ablaze as retaliation for having been driven out from Kuwait by the
United States-led coalition during the 1st Gulf War.
This scorched-earth policy
had begun in January and increased in February as the ground war got underway,
bringing about one of the worst environmental disasters in living memory and a
complete shambles for the local people and farmers.
Therefore, the Brazilian
photographer traveled to southeastern Kuwait in April 1991, on assignment for
The New York Times Magazine.
In late March, news had
already spread predicting that the fires would burn for two to five years
before going out on their own if active efforts weren´t done to bring them
under control.
© jmse
It had dawned on Salgado
that it could be a once in a lifetime chance to create a very special and
interesting story conveying a raft of different messages, fully immersed in
particularly appalling conditions, under extremely hot temperatures, steadily surrounded
by very brave and professional men striving after putting the raging fires out,
and doing his best to get the most meaningful possible pictures, leveraging his
remarkable flair to capture human beings relationship with their environment
and delving into the economical effects of conflicts and their consequences on
natural sceneries and populations dwelling them.
SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHIC GEAR
In order to tackle the
photographic coverage of these burning oil fields in Kuwait,
Sebastiao Salgado´s Leica
R6 serial number 1747647 from 1988 with Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm f/2 serial number
3390243 sold at WestLicht Photographica Auction in Vienna (Austria) on November
27, 2005
© WestLicht Photographica Auction
Salgado chooses a 24 x 36
mm format Leica R6 manual focusing camera.
© jmse
This was undoubtedly a
very wise and relevant selection, true to form based on a practical approach
and optimized to plunge into the specific photographic task he would have to do
in Kuwait under extreme temperatures, widspread oil slicks, flames everywhere,
desert sand and oil often smearing each area of his body.
As a matter of fact, in
spite of the integrated AF maelstrom in 35 mm format SLR cameras that had
stormed the photographic scope since the launching into market of the
pioneering Minolta Maxxum 7000 in 1985 autofocus ( fitted with motorized film
advanced system which has become the industry´s standard) and had then in 1991
both the Nikon F4 autofocus (introduced in 1988) and the Canon EOS-1 autofocus
(presented in 1989) as the two most widespread cameras used by pros,
Leica R6, a fully
mechanical and manual focusing minimalist 24 x 36 mm format camera that doesn´t
need batteries and features a sturdy completely mechanical shutter. It was able
to get the pictures beside the burning Kuwaiti oil wells in 1991, under such
extreme temperatures that it would have been impossible with extraordinary
modern digital professional cameras available twenty-nine years later in 2020
like the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, Canon EOS R5, Nikon D5, Nikon D810, Nikon Z7,
Sony Alpha 7 III, Sony Alpha 9, Fujifilm X-T4, Olympus E-M1 Mark III, Olympus
EM-1X, Panasonic S1R, Leica SL2 and others needing batteries to operate and
being heavily reliant on electronics.
© Leica Camera AG
Salgado opts for a very
uncluttered professional camera from Leica, only with the necessary controls
and lacking AF, but being a real workhorse flawlessly working under extreme
conditions,
Inner view of the
first-class metal bladed, vertical travelling focal plane shutter of the Leica
R6, featuring speeds between 1 second and 1/1000 s. Instead of electromagnets
we can see levers, cams, gears and springs. A wonder of traditional mechanics
that doesn´t depend on any electronics and includes a very accurate clockwork
device.
© Leica Camera AG
boasting an utterly
mechanical shutter that doesn´t need any batteries and in perfect symbiosis
with the Leica R lenses, many of which are the best ones in the world at the
moment for 35 mm format reflex cameras from a mechanical and optical
performance viewpoint and look the part because of their gorgeous mechanical
construction, the silky smoothness and accuracy of their focusing helicoid and
the excellent image quality they yield.
It is a precision camera leaving its working control in the
photographer´s hands, eyes and mind, as well as being all metal, with a strong
die cast aluminium body with sturdy die cast zinc top cover and brass bottom
cover, so everything has a feeling of strength and precision.
While Sebastiao Salgado
was in Kuwait making his legendary reportage on the burning Kuwaiti oil fields,
Reimers Photo Materials Company at 300 East Bay St., Milwaukee (Wisconsin),
published an advertisement on page 60 of Shutterbug Magazine number of April
1991, reporting about the virtues of the Leica R6 as a high performance
professional camera with a mechanical shutter as raison d´être and incepted for
a total control of decisions by the photographer.
© jmse
In addition, Sebastiao
Salgado takes three Leica R primes with him to Kuwait:
©
Leica Camera AG
A) A Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm
f/2.8 Third Version. Designed by Heinz Marquardt in December of 1967,
manufactured between 1972 and 2009, featuring 6 elements in 5 groups, length of
48.5 mm, maximum diameter of 67.5 mm and a weight of 400 g.
This was the lens with
which he created most of his images in Kuwait, using it as a general purpose
objective that could be used with all subjects and most photographic
conditions,
©
Leica Camera AG
with the added advantage
that because of its deeply recessed front element, it doesn´t need any hood.
Obviously, this lens is a
design whose optical formula dates back to mid sixties, so it is far from the
stratospheric levels of resolving power and contrast of the Apo-Macro-Elmarit-R
100 mm f/2.8 (designed by Wolfgang Vollrath in 1986) at f/2.8 and f/4 apertures
or the much more modern aspherical Leica lenses.
In addition, its bokeh is
a bit nervous.
© jmse
But all of it doesn´t
matter, because Salgado will make vast majority of his pictures in Kuwait with
great depth of field, stopping down at f/8 and f/11, diaphragms in which the
optical performance of the Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm f/2.8 is excellent.
But though being
fundamental aspects of any lens, resolving power and contrast are not
everything.
Greater Burhan Oil Field,
Kuwait. 1991. Workers place a new wellhead in an oil well that had been damaged
by Iraqi explosives.
© Sebastiao Salgado
He does know that the
Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm f/2.8 matches superbly the kind of images he wants to
create, thanks to the fantastic way in which it captures textural details and
the extraordinary even illumination attained between f/5.6 and f/11, with the
added benefit of a stratopsheric ability of this lens depicting subtleties,
nuances and detail in shadows, enhancing the synergy with the very wide tonal
range that Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film is able to attain.
Besides, it is a lens
wonderfully adapting to his meditative style of photography, taking the
necessary time to get the pictures.
And unlike stratospheric
Leica R lenses as the Apo-Macro-Elmarit-R 100 mm f/2, Apo-Summicron-R 180 mm
f/2, Apo-Telyt-R 280 mm f/4 and others yielding a type of image looking for
optical perfection from a scientific standpoint and unmatched levels of
resolving power and contrast at the time, the Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm f/2.8
hasn´t glaring weaknesses,
Greater Burhan Oil Field,
Kuwait, 1991. Chemical spray protects a firefighter. The light metering system
of the Leica R6 (in symbiosis with the experience of the photographer metering
through estimation) helped to get impressive pictures like this with great
differences in diaphragms between the high key and low key areas of the frame,
since it is a design wonder in which light comes through the lens and strikes a
very sophisticated semitransparent multicoated mirror, which is coated with 17
different layers to accurately produce the reflection and transmission
characteristics wished by Leica. This way, thirty percent of the light passes
through the mirror and strikes a complex mirrored reflector made up of 1345
tiny reflectors that concentrate the light and precisely reflect it down to a
single silicon photo cell in the base of the camera´s mirror box.
© Sebastiao Salgado
paints wonderfully and
delivers pictures oozing character of their own, together with a very special
visual aesthetics accurately depicting the atmosphere of every photographed
instant.
© Leica Camera AG
B) An Elmarit-R 28 mm
f/2.8 First Version (1970-1994). Designed by Rudolph Ruehl in 1970, featuring 8
elements in 8 groups, length of 40 mm, maximum diameter of 63 mm and a weight
of 275 g.
It is one of the lightest
lenses of the Leica R System, very compact and comfortable to use, with good
resolving power and contrast in the center at widest f/2.8 aperture and soft on
the corners, but on stopping down to f/5.6 and f/8, image quality is very good,
with clearly superior micro contrast and a commendable uniformity of
performance between center and corners.
Furthermore, it is a prone
to flare lens at f/2.8, but if won´t be significant either, since Salgado will
mostly stop down on using it to get extensive depth of field and optimize its
optical performance, beaten by the superb one delivered by the 8 elements in 7
groups Elmarit-R 28 mm f/2.8 Second Version which will appear two years later,
but enough for the kind of imagery the Brazilian photographer hankers for.
In addition, the tiny dimensions
and weight of this Elmarit-R 28 mm f/2.8 1st Version were to practical effects
more adequate to shoot handheld than the Elmarit-R 28 mm f/2.8 2nd Version from
1993 (featuring a length of 48.5 mm, a maximum diameter of 67.5 mm and a weight
of 435 g) in the midst of the dreadful conditions in which Salgado had to work
next to the burning oil wells, with oxigene getting depleted, exceedingly
suffocating heat, smoke blocking out the sunlight and the photographer sweating
buckets at every moment, so the 160 g less and the almost 1 cm shorter length
of the first version lens were helpful.
© Leica Camera AG
C) A Summicron-R 35 mm f/2
Second Version (1977-2009) featuring 6 elements in 6 groups along with a length
of 48.5 mm, maximum diameter of 66 mm and a weight of 430 g.
From a mechanical
viewpoint, this is a superbly built objective, with lens barrel, aperture ring,
focusing ring and the built-in lens hood manufactured in metal.
The movement of the focus
ring is pretty smooth and the aperture ring is snappy, in half f-stop
increments.
It can´t be defined as
very compact or light, because the Elmarit-R 35 mm f/2.8 is smaller and
lighter, but anyway, it isn´t bulky at all and enables to comfortable shoot
handheld with it, as well as being a very sturdy lens boasting a built-in
retractable sunshade able to withstand a major hit or an accidental drop.
On the other hand, its
focusing throw is much longer than 35 mm wideangle lenses from other brands,
and allows exceedingly accurate focusing.
Its center image quality
is outstanding at every diaphragm, whereas its optical performance at f/2 and
f/2.8 in the corners drops significantly, with an apparent degree of softness,
and is simply acceptable.
Two highly knowledgeable
firemen check and clean a wellhead (made up of spools, valves and assorted
adapters that provide pressure control) at Greater Burhan Oil Field, while
other teammates surround them. Kuwait. 1991. The legendary look of Kodak Tri-X
400 black and white film, with its superb acutance and its beautiful visible
grain are pretty apparent in this photograph made from a very distance. The
photographer shot stopping down at a slow shutter speed (which has rendered the
moving left arm of the worker nearest to the camera blurred, getting motion
feeling) spawning and extensive depth of field with great sharpness from
foreground to background on almost the whole surface of the negative.
©
Sebastiao Salgado
But the Summicron-R 35 mm
f/2 produces superb image quality between f/4 and f/11, with excellent
resolving power and overall contrast, particularly in the center, and fairly
good tonal reproduction, so it is a very suitable lens for the kind of images
with great depth of field that Salgado will create in Kuwait, in which the
blurred outer corners delivered by this lens at f/2 and f/2.8 (that could be a
major drawback in some applications like architecture photography) are irrelevant
in Salgado´s images with substantial sharpness zone.
And the 1.2 EV vignetting
of the lens at widest f/2 aperture won´t pose any problem, since vast majority
of the pictures will be made stopping down.
Moreover, its resistance
to flare and glare is very good.
If we add to it that
distortion is very well corrected, with only a very small barrel distortion of
around 0.8%, it seems evident that albeit not being a stellar performing lens,
the Elmarit-R 35 mm f/2 is an excellent one with very precise focusing, great
ergonomics and just about the perfect size for a significant gain in luminosity
enhancing the brilliance and sharpness through the reflex viewfinder with
respect to the Elmarit-R 35 mm f/2.8.
©
jmse
Therefore, Sebastiao
Salgado isn´t a photographer particularly concerned about technicalities of
cameras, lenses or MTF curves, and in the type of photography he does, maximum
feasible perfection in terms of resolving power and contrast are not the most
important priorities, so on choosing the photographic gear, his decision is
boiled down to utmost possible adequacy for the photographic task to
accomplish.
Whatever it may be, it is
clear that his choice of a Leica R6 and three Leica R primes (specially the
Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm f/2.8) paid off and he got gorgeous and simultaneously
haunting pictures of the set ablaze Kuwaiti oil fields, the brave firefighters
trying to extinguish the fires and the ravished landscapes.
But things would be much
more terrible in Kuwait than Salgado had foreseen, and getting the pictures
would become the greatest challenge in his photographic career that had started
eighteen years before in Paris, when he gave up his activity as an economist
and devoted his life to photography, working for Sygma and Gamma Photo Agencies
until joining Magnum in 1979 and gaining international fame as a
photojournalist on managing to capture the attempted assassination of Ronald
Reagan in March 1981.
Kuwait, 1991. A
firefighter controls from a very near distance the effect of water thrown with
hoses on the flames of a burning oil well. The firemen plucked up courage and
managed to remain unflappable in a context like this putting them through their
paces.
© Sebastiao Salgado
A HELL IN THE MIDDLE OF
THE DESERT
From the first day of his
stay in Kuwait, particularly in the area of Burhan oil wells, Sebastiao Salgado
realizes that the context in which he will have to get pictures is truly
apocalyptic and fraught with almost insurmountable difficulties to obtain
images, because of a number of factors:
A fireman walks beside a
burning oil well previously destroyed with explosives by Saddam Hussein´s
troops while fleeing Kuwait and whose huge flames and dense smoke reach great
altitude.
© Sebastiao Salgado
- Temperatures are hugely
high, often ranging between 65º C and 200 ºC next to the oil wells, with a
significant lack of oxygen, so breathing becomes very hard and everybody must
often wear special protective clothes.
Three firemen struggling
to cap an oil well in Greater Burham Oil Field. Kuwait. 1991. The level of
detail, sharpness and capture of textures yielded by the Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm
f/2.8 in the center of the image is praiseworthy and particularly discernible
in large prints on the metallic components.
© Sebastiao Salgado
- There is a permanent
risk of explosions.
A fireman walks on the
desert sand near a explosion of a Kuwaiti oil well visible in the background
and whose flames are soaring a lot of meters. The marks on the desert sand of
the caterpillars and bulldozers used by the firemen can be seen in the
foreground. The versatility and wide exposure latitude of Kodak Tri-X 400,
pushed to EI 800, made possible to get this picture with great depth of field,
shooting handheld at f/11 and slow shutter speed under very low light
conditions. Once more, the lavish detail captured by the Macro-Elmarit-R 60
mmf/2 in both highlight and low key areas is truly laudable. Moreover, the
exceedingly bright and contrasty viewfinder of the Leica R6 (the best in the
world in 1991 in the reflex cameras scope along with the one featured by the
Olympus OM-1) was of invaluable help for Salgado, who got a lot of mileage out
of it to quickly and accurately focus when he had to do pictures like this
under very dim light conditions.
© Sebastiao Salgado
- The smokes have absorbed
roughly 80% of the sun´s radiation, preventing its rays from lighting the
locations, and there are massive quantities of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide
everywhere.
One Kuwaiti local man clad
in traditional clothes comforts another one beside him while watching a lot of
oil wells burnt by Saddam´s Hussein retreating troops. Once again, the
extensive depth of field attained by the photographer shooting stopping down at
a slow shutter speed has resulted in sharpness almost over the whole surface of
the image, in which are relevant the huge columns of black smoke on the upper
half of the picture, the low sun on the left, the two human figures and the
charred ground everywhere. Dominique Granier´s darkroom wizardry is apparent in
this image whose grayscale, dodging and burning are admirable.
© Sebastiao
Salgado
- The air is saturated
with soot and charred sand.
An experienced fireman
orders the rest of members of his team to stop on approaching to an oil well.
The risk of explosion or slicks ignition was always present, so security
measures and caution were of top paramount significance.
© Sebastiao Salgado
- There are a lot of large
and very dangerous flammable slicks that is frequently necessary to cross
walking on them to approach as much as possible to the fires and extinguish
them.
- Land mines around the
oil wells which had to be cleared first, at a high degree of danger.
© Sebastiao Salgado
- There are heaps of
swollen bodies of burnt camels, killed by the fires and the highly polluted
air, resulting in an unbearable stench.
©
Sebastiao Salgado
-There is a steady rain of
oil, soaking both the firemen and the photographer at every moment.
- Physical weariness is
constant while getting pictures and the photographer drips sweat with every
movement made.
- To comfortably look
through the extraordinary reflex viewfinder of the Leica R6 usually becomes out
of the question, since eyes are frequently full of sweat and reddened by the
suffocating temperatures. Therefore, to be able to get the pictures becomes a
highly strenuous effort, most times on the brink of exhaustion.
- It´s very difficult to
avoid the pervading smoke entering mouth and lungs, so stress skyrockets.
- The constant noise
generated by the burning oil wells is so strong that firefighters are bound to
cry to each other´s ear to be able to communicate.
- Heat is so vicious that
unpredictability reigns supreme, to such an extent that one day Salgado´s
Elmarit-R 28 mm f/2.8 First Version lens warped after being very near the
flames for many hours.
- Unexploded cluster bombs
appear from time to time on the desert sands around the oil wells, greatly
increasing the danger.
An image clearly depicting
the courage and comradeship of the firemen striving after extinguishing the
fires of the Kuwaiti oil wells. One of them is throwing water at the burning
oil well with a hose from inside a protective structure, while other three very
near him are observing the evolution of the flames and giving instructions. The
veteran fireman located most on the left is greatly risking his life because of
his huge proximity to the blazes, fundamental to convey accurate information to
his teammates. And the three further firemen placed on the right and near
Salgado´s Leica R6 camera remain in reserve, watching what is happening and
ready to help if it is necessary. The level of comradeship of these men was
incredible. In addition, the greyscale of the upper area of the picture is
admirable, in the same way as the lavish detail in lights and shadows.
©
Sebastiao Salgado
- To get the best possible
pictures means to unabatedly stick close
to the very brave and experienced firefighters.
The upshot of it is that
fulfilling this photographic essay in Kuwait becomes a battle of attrition in
which however good photographer you can be, it isn´t enough at all to go ahead
with this picture story in which plucking up courage, overcoming fear to death,
withstand the fatigue and an unwavering passion for what you are doing also
become key factors.
Therefore, Salgado had to
engage himself body and soul to get his job done, risking his life many times
and simultaneously trying to survive in the same way as the firemen with whom
he was embedded.
THE UNKNOWN HEROES
An utterly exhausted
veteran fireman engrossed in his thoughts while resting with his back leaned
against a truck wheel very near an oil well. All of his body and
clothes, the desert sand surrounding him and the wheel are completely covered
in oil. His countenance shows overexhaustion, tons of accumulated strain and
grief. Greater Burham Oil Field. Kuwait, 1991.
© Sebastiao Salgado
But if there were people
deserving accolades in this story for having jeopardized their lives, they were
undoubtedly the brave firemen from five firms (particularly the Canadian team
from SafetyBoss of Calgary and the United States squad from Red Adair Company)
who fought tooth and nail to quell the fires and were photographed by Sebastiao
Salgado, most times in action,
A fireman lying utterly
exhausted on the ground. He is at the end of his tether after having fought for
many hours trying to cap the oil well in the background.
© Sebastiao Salgado
but others ones frazzled.
Another fireman resting on
the ground next to an oil well still pumping oil. He has fallen backwards,
overworn by the toil, and his helmet is out of his position.
© Sebastiao
Salgado
Highly experienced and
professional men with boundless courage, whose efforts to bring the fires and
other damages under control began in April 1991 and finished in November of
that year.
Eight months enduring an
ordeal of flames, far from their families, always covered in oil, often
trudging through flammable and exceedingly dangerous slicks (some firemen died
one day when the oil patch on which they were walking burnt) to reach the oil
wells.
Two worn-out firemen
resting next to an oil well on which they have worked intensely for a lot of
hours. Both of them are completely covered in oil, in the same way as the
surrounding ground. On far left of the image can be seen a third fireman´s
right leg leaned on the new wellhead they have just installed, while a jet of
oil is still going out of it with great strength. A number of burning oil wells
and smoke columns can be seen in the background, because the photographer has
stopped down the lens to get maximum sharpness all over the frame, shooting at
a slow shutter speed.
© Sebastiao Salgado
Human beings whose names
remained secret because of security reasons and whose toil and sweat until
preventing the spilling of more oil (millions of barrels of oil were burnt
every day)
A Kuwaiti young shepherd
taking a flock of sheep to safety, far from the burning oil wells and poisonous
smokes.
© Sebastiao Salgado
made possible the future
of thousands of local farmers and shepherds living on the desert,
A landscape of havoc with
the desert sands and the highway smeared with oil, very dangerous slicks
everywhere and abundant burning oil wells and smoke columns in the background.
© Sebastiao Salgado
together with the survival
of the Kuwaiti oil industry, because other way, fires would have burned for
between three and five years before going out on their own.
These men working in teams
of ten had to often face flames soaring 300 to 400 feet skyward, wearing
protective clothing and sometimes approaching specific areas close to oil well
fires in which temperatures reached 200º C.
Two utterly covered in oil
firemen have managed to cap an oil well. Very few people in the world were able
to do such a highly specialized work like this in which a great previous
experience, knowledge and tons of courage are necessary. And they rose to the
challenge. The Leica R6 proved to be a formidable photographic tool in the
hands of Sabastiao Salgado. Not in vain, this camera follow the fundamental
keynote set forth by the genius Marty Forscher (a renowned repairman with
tremendous know-how that enabled him to fix cameras from different brands and
whose Camera Repair Service at 37 West
47th Street in Midtown Manhattan became a shrine between 1946 and 1987 to many
professional photographers, particularly its always thronged counter, in which
he often spoke to customers like Mary Ellen Mark, Joel Meyerowitz, Richard
Avedon, Annie Leibovitz and so on), according to which a profesional camera
should be like a hockey puck, rugged and reliable enough to withstand nearly
any possible abuse and still continue to fire away and get usable pictures ( a
philosophy also embodied by other superb utterly mechanical 35 mm manual
focusing cameras like the Nikon F2, Canon F1, Olympus OM-1, Leica R8 and R9,
etc).
© Sebastiao Salgado
Furthermore, if putting
out the fires is something extremely difficult and risky, capping them once
they have been extinguished is even more dangerous, because the oil from the
still-spewing wells inevitably will splatter over the firefighters ´ garments,
and it can be ignited by static electricity.
REASONS FOR THE CHOICE OF
BLACK AND WHITE
Sebastiao Salgado could
have used color film to get very spectacular pictures in Kuwait, taking
advantage of the contrast of warm colors that are particularly well rendered,
deeply saturated and vivid, with great fidelity, by the Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm
f/2 lens with which the Brazilian photographer made most of the images.
© jmse
But Salgado has always
been a black and white photographer working with the Kodak-Tri-X 400 film,
which was also his choice to do his photographic essay on the burning oil wells
in Kuwait.
As a matter of fact, he
was already a great expert in this legendary b & w chemical emulsion and
had been been able to greatly improve the excellent Kodak D-76 developer,
modifying its chemical elements and composition, getting a bit more grey Kodak
Tri-X 400 negatives featuring far better detail, specially in the shadow areas,
years before Stéphane Cormier, magician of Kodak D-76, managed to get optimum results
with Kodak Tri-X 400 in low key areas and mid tones prolonging the development
time to create exceedingly rich negatives.
As had happened with his
previous picture stories Sahel : The End of the Road (1980) and Other Americas
(1986), or when he photographed the coal miners in Dhanbad, Bihar (India) in
1989, using Kodak Tri-X 400 b & w film to also get pictures of Kuwait
burning oil wells and the brave firemen striving upon extinguishing them,
Salgado focuses more the observer´s attention on the story he wants to tell,
with very strong images and framing conveying the crudeness and tension of the
scenes, together with the noise and the heat that can be perceived in the
blazes with intense grays and blacks.
Therefore, the images
making up the Brazilian photographer´s reportage in Kuwait in 1991 were
successful in offer a unique aesthetic appearance and look, drawing the utmost
from the remarkable potential of Kodak Tri-X 400 film in terms of acutance,
formidable rendering of the full gray scale tonal ranges and remarkable level
of detail and microcontrast in shadows fairly visible in his large prints
handcraftedly made on top-notch baryta photographic paper.
Moreover, the
photojournalistic and documentary per excellence b & w film is highly
versatile, and aside from its nominal high speed of EI 400 for the time, it can
be pushed to EI 800 in standard developers, yielding very good results based on
its present but very pleasant grain providing great acutance (id est, visual
perception of sharpness), its very wide exposure latitude and a good amount of
dynamic range.
And there was a further
major factor enhancing the gorgeous image quality of these images : the
commendable labor of Dominique Granier, a world-class black and white French
printer, who by dint of huge endeavor, expertise and many thousands of working
hours was able to feel the light as Salgado captured it, accurately translating
it into fabulous king size enlargements on baryta photographic paper, something
of extreme difficulty, because of the great production, painstaking attention to
detail and huge qualitative standard of the Brazilian photorapher, who always
controlled personally, from beginning to end, every production stage of his
silver gelatin prints.
© jmse
At the moment in which
Sebastiao Salgado finished his work in Kuwait, he had shot a total of two
hundred rolls of 35 mm Kodak Tri-X 400 film.
And Dominique Granier made
gorgeous prints from the original 24 x 36 mm format b& w original
negatives, managing to bring out maximum detail, obtaining bright and lively
images, as well as staying in the shadows, working like a craftsman, proud of
his work, very happy helping the photographer, whose satisfaction with his
prints is the highest form of recognition.
An artisan of silver
halide printing, whose way of doing things had been pioneered during fifties by
other alchemists of black and white silver prints on baryta paper like Pierre
Gassmann (founder of Picto laboratory in Paris in 1950 and a remarkable printer
who worked for Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour " Chim
", William Klein, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Willy Ronies and other
renowned photographers), Georges Févre ( a man with amazing skill and the best
printer of Picto halcyon days during sixties, seventies and eighties, when he
serviced around twenty Magnum photographers, in addition to offering the best
night service in the world) and the genius Al Benson (former Director of the
Newport School of Photography and who in 1991 had a 47 years experience as a
master black and white printer in his firm Al Benson Photographic Services in
Costa Mesa, California).
And in the same way as
would go on happening throughout the whole photographic career of Sebastiao
Salgado with other reportages made by him, the pictures he created in Kuwait in
1991 expressed by themselves a need to produce reference-class prints based on
the exceptional virtues of baryta paper (particularly the Ilford Warmtone 255 g
with selenium bath mostly used by Dominique Granier) regarding incomparable
long preservation, subtlety of rendering and exceedingly beautiful grayscale.
KUWAIT : A DESERT ON FIRE,
A MILESTONE PHOTO BOOK
Early 2016, twenty-five
years later.
© jmse
Sebastiao Salgado is in
full introspection in Paris, remembering the reportage he made in Kuwait in
1991 and suddenly feels that it would be great to do a book including the cream
of the crop of those pictures, showing them with an awesome quality of reproduction
approaching as much as possible to the gelatin silver prints made by Dominique
Granier for exhibitions.
The arrival of digital
technology during early XXI Century and its conquest of the photographic
market, greatly replacing analog photography, has brought with it a boom in
photobooks boasting an amazing evolution, gorgeous appearance and qualitative
increase of pictures reproduction, a real quantum leap in a number of
significant aspects.
This way, there are in
2016 a raft of new creative possibilities that didn´t exist in 1991 regarding
the design of top-notch photobooks and a myriad of choices as to sizes, paper
qualities, layout of text and pictures, impact of covers, etc, all of them in
synergy with new and state-of-the-art digital photo printing technologies.
Hasselblad Imacon
Flextight X5 professional virtual drum scanner. It is able to get unsurpassed
quantity of information from Kodak Tri-X black and white 35 mm original
negatives, creating extraordinary digital archives preserving the very special
look and organic quality of its grain, along with a remarkable level of
sharpness, plentiful detail in textures, great tonal range and aesthetic value,
in addition to hugely expand the creative and control possibilities in digital
darkroom with respect to the analog one.
© Hasselblad
cutting-edge photo printing technologies
In addition, new
breakthrough hybrid analog/digital methods for scanning films have reached
benchmark levels since 2006 with the Hasselblad Imacon Flextight X5 virtual
drum scanner delivering a maximum optical resolution of 8,000 dpi, colour depth
of 16 bit and a DMAX of almost 5, with a vertical optical system allowing the
CCD to face downwards, creating a glass-free optical path between the original
film and the superb Rodenstock lens, guaranteeing the best possible focus on
the whole surface of the frame, from center to borders and corners and drawing
an unprecedented amount of information from it, so results on subsequently
printing are extraordinary.
© jmse
Salgado had realized since
late nineties that digital photography would arrive to stay, but he does know
that chemical and digital photography are not antagonist, simply different
media, whose flawless symbiosis can result in a wonderful digital negative
scanned from the original analog one, hugely expanding the creative
possibilities and unmatched level of control through the digital darkroom to
get the best feasible reproduction of pictures in a photobook.
In addition, Kodak Tri-X
400 with its strong grain structure scans far better than some of the most
modern b & w tabular grain films, and the Hasselblad Flextight X5
professional scanner will yield unsurpassed clarity and detail rendition with
it, together with an exceedingly faithful reproduction of its tonal range and
unique image aesthetics stemming from developing it in Kodak D-76.
But first and foremost,
throughout the twenty-five years elapsed since he was in Kuwait on assignment
for The New York Times magazine, the most important factor has been a person
liking to be in the background, making a silent and discreet but absolutely
fundamental work not only for the photographic career of Sebastiao Salgado, but
also in his evolution as human being : his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado, who
started her love for photography in 1970 and began conceiving and designing
vast majority of Sebastiao Salgado´s photography books and all the worldwide
exhibitions of his work.
This woman, director of
Amazonas Images since 1994, holding a degree in architecture from the Ecole
National Supérieure de Beaux and Urbanism at the Paris VII University, founder
of Photo Revue and Longue Vue magazines, managing a Magnum Agency gallery and
nominated for a Hollywood Oscar Award in 2015 for Best Feature Documentary as
producer of The Salt of the Earth, has been Salgado´s lifetime beacon,
particularly during the most gruesome moments, of which there were many in
Kuwait, wholeheartedly supporting him to go ahead irrespective of the huge
difficulties.
Therefore, Lélia Wánick
Salgado has been from the very beginning a driving force in herself, with a
tremendous discipline, organization ability, quickness and accuracy of thought,
as well as developing an outstanding insight on the photographic market
circumstances, becoming a flow of ideas in crunch time.
Moreover, after watching
millions of images, she has become a remarkable picture editor with a gift for
choosing the most defining photographs made by his husband for books,
exhibitions, collectors´ prints and so on.
And in 2016, Sebastiao
Salgado and his wife Lélia Wanick were already a team with remarkable expertise
and cohesion gleaned during 35 years working together in the photographic scope
since 1981.
Both of them shared a
common fundamental aim fostered by their meticulous eye: the creation from the
best possible original negatives of prints in large sizes, oozing exceptional
tonal nuances and level of detail in shadows, as a form of visual communication
and developing printing techniques to match their respective visions,
personally supervising and utterly controlling every stage to assure that the
pictures convey the intended meaning.
And according to that
image ontology,
© jmse
Sebastiao Salgado, with
the help of his wife Lélia Wánick, decided in 2016 to create two masterpiece
photobooks encompassing the best pictures made in Kuwait, enhanced with all the
aforementioned ingredients stemming from the hybrid analog/digital techniques,
and approaching as much as possible to the reference-class standard of quality
of worldwide exhibitions and king size prints for collectors:
Cover of the landmark
photobook A Desert on Fire (Limited Edition), one of the pinnacle works ever
made in its genre.
© Taschen Books
a) Kuwait : A Desert on
Fire (Limited Edition), a collector´s edition of 1,000 copies, in impeccable 45 x 41 cm grand-scale size,
with 188 pages, museum quality reproduction of the photographs, highly
informative accompanying text shedding light on the content,
© Taschen
Books
and each one being
numbered and signed by Sebastiao Salgado,
Though the eye of the
photographer, his experience and to be at the adequate place and moment, along
with the accuracy on pressing the shutter release button of the camera to
capture meaningful instants are by far the most important factors to get a good
picture, it isn´t less true that the Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm f/2.8 lens
absolutely lacking flare and performing exceptionally in distinguishing the
subtle tonal differences in light or shaded areas (even with high contrast,
specially with the Kodak Tri-X 400 film) was very valuable to create in 1991
the kind of original black and white negatives Salgado wished to either
subsequently make sensational large prints on baryta paper or get an
exceptional quality of reproduction in photobooks on his reportage in Kuwait.
©
Taschen Books
a real artwork featuring a
comprehensive choice of 83 exceedingly beautiful black and white pictures.
© Taschen
Books
b) Kuwait : A Desert on
Fire standard edition, with dimensions of 30 x 2.8 x 32.6 cm, 208 pages
including the same 83 breathtaking black and white images with superb quality
of reproduction and texts with the lowdown on the pictures.
Both photobooks were a
golden brooch for the photographs that Sebastiao Salgado made in Kuwait a
quarter of a century before.
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To comment or to read comments please scroll past the ads below.
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Thank you Mr. Serrano Esparza for your excellent work and the details on this great book. I will now look thru my copy with fresh eyes!
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