A Different Light: The Photography of Sebastião Salgado by Parvati Nair (review)
Parvati Nair's study of the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado takes a broad view of the latter's oeuvre, both within the tradition and practices of photography itself and in the larger context of modern photovisual production and its political and aesthetic possibilities. Given Salgado's position as the premier photojournalist of the moment, Nair's study goes a long way toward elaborating an interpretive framework through which to understand not only Salgado's photography but any photographic production of its sort: that is, any imagistic production that flows in wide distribution through the dominant circuits of the global public sphere. This work constitutes, to my knowledge, the first book-length study of the Brazilian documentarist's work, and as such it represents a significant contribution to Latin American scholarship on photography and beyond—to visual cultural studies writ large. The author effortlessly ranges across aesthetic theory, Latin American historiography, and postcolonial criticism, as well as theories of photography, in addressing her subject.