Nearly a year after the passing of Sebastião Salgado (Aimorés, 1944 - Paris, 2025), the Fortress of Bard, in Bard, (Aosta Valley) is dedicating an exhibition to the Brazilian photographer focusing on one of the most recent and recognizable cores of his research: the representation of glaciers and perennial snows. The exhibition, titled Glaciers, will be on view from April 24 to September 27, 2026 in the spaces of the Aosta Valley fortress and is part of the program of initiatives that the institution has long dedicated to the themes of scientific popularization and climate change.
The exhibition project is curated by Lélia Wanick Salgado and produced in collaboration with Contrasto. The itinerary consists of 54 large-format photographs, which are accompanied by a video tribute dedicated to the author and an extensive biographical apparatus. The overall layout of the exhibition aims to return an articulated reading of Salgado’s photographic production, with particular attention to the final phase of his career, when his gaze focused on extreme ecosystems increasingly exposed to environmental transformations.
Sebastião Salgado occupies a central role in contemporary photography because of the breadth of his projects and his approach that interweaves documentary dimensions and humanistic vision. In the course of his work he has observed global social and economic transformations, while in recent years he has turned his attention to the great glacial masses of the planet, considered as sensitive indicators of Earth’s climatic conditions.
The images selected for Glaciers traverse different geographical areas, including the Antarctic Peninsula, Canada, Patagonia, the Himalayas, South Georgia and Russia. The photographic language remains faithful to high-contrast black and white, the author’s stylistic signature, which allows emphasizing ice structures and their morphological transformations. The result is a visual corpus that relates the monumental scale of landscapes to their progressive vulnerability.
The central theme of the exhibition concerns the reduction of glacial masses. Monitoring initiated since the 1960s reports a steady decrease, with the disappearance of many glaciers in different areas of the world. The phenomenon entails a loss that affects the cultural dimension of glacial landscapes, which have been present in the history of art and literature as elements of reference and inspiration. The role of glaciers is also crucial within global hydrological balances. Glacial masses contribute to the drinking water supply for about two billion people and support a major part of the world’s irrigated agriculture, estimated at two-thirds of the cultivated area. Their reduction therefore affects environmental, economic and social dynamics on a planetary scale.
Salgado’s photographic work thus takes on a systematic observational function. The images restore environments characterized by extreme conditions, now the focus of the scientific community’s interest in studying the Earth’s geological history and analyzing the consequences of global warming. The Fortress of Bard’s exhibition approach places these materials in a context that aims to encourage cross-reading between artistic production and scientific data. Indeed, the itinerary includes insights curated by Michele Freppaz, a full professor at the Department of Agricultural, Forestry and Food Sciences at the University of Turin.
An additional element of the project concerns accessibility. There is an inclusive tactile path created by Dieci Occhi, with the work of Valentina Lungo, Tactile Book Designer, and Enrico Delmastro, Graphic Designer. The project is also developed thanks to the collaboration of Luigi Giunta, president of the Unione Italiana dei Ciechi e degli Ipovedenti - Valle d’Aosta section, together with the social cooperative C’era l’Acca.
Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado was born on February 8, 1944, in Aimorés, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. At the age of sixteen he moved to Vitória, where he completed his secondary education and began his university career. In 1967 he married Lélia Deluiz Wanick. After further studies in São Paulo, the couple moved first to Paris and then to London, where Salgado worked as an economist for the International Coffee Organization. In 1973 he returned to Paris with his wife and took up photography. He began as a freelancer, then worked with the agencies Sygma, Gamma and Magnum, before co-founding with Lélia the agency Amazonas Images. Over the years he travels extensively, initially documenting indigenous peoples and peasants in Latin America, then the famine in Africa in the mid-1980s.
His early experiences flow into monographic publications. Between 1986 and 2001 he focused on two major projects: the first devoted to the transformation of industrial labor on a large scale, collected in the volume La mano dell’uomo (Contrasto, 1994) and presented in exhibitions in several Italian cities; the second focused on contemporary migratory movements, from refugees and displaced people to the megacities of the global South. With Lélia Salgado he also founded the Instituto Terra in the state of Minas Gerais, a reforestation project that transformed a degraded area into a viable ecosystem once again through the planting of tens of thousands of trees. Sebastião Salgado died in Paris on May 23, 2025.
Hours: weekdays: 10 a.m. | 6 p.m.
Saturdays, Sundays, holidays: 10 a.m. | 7 p.m.; closed Mondays
Rates
Full price: 15.00 euros
Reduced: 12.00 euros
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| At Fortress of Bard, Salgado's glaciers: 54 shots investigate climate change |
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