Photography returns to the forefront of the exhibition program at the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa with an exhibition dedicated to Sebastião Salgado (1944–2025), a figure who has had a decisive impact on the history of contemporary photography. Following retrospectives on Ruth Orkin, Dorothea Lange, and Brassaï, the Venetian institution will present the exhibition *Sebastião Salgado: Photographs from the Collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris* from October 24, 2026, to April 4, 2027.
Promoted and organized by the Municipality and the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa, in collaboration with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and Silvana Editoriale, and under the patronage of the Veneto Region, the exhibition is the first in Italy to offer a comprehensive overview of the Brazilian photographer’s entire body of work. The project comes one year after the photographer’s passing and traces five decades of his work through a selection of over 160 images.
The exhibition is curated by Pascal Hoël, head of collections at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, France’s leading institution dedicated to photography. The MEP’s collections include works spanning a period from the 1950s to the present day and document decades of history, social transformations, and cultural shifts through the language of photography.
The relationship between the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and Sebastião Salgado dates back to the 1980s. Over the years, the Paris-based institution has supported several of the photographer’s projects, helping to build a collection of particular significance. To mark the conclusion of some forty years of collaboration, in 2018 Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado, in turn, supported the MEP with a donation of 105 photographs.
The exhibition in Bassano del Grappa traces the chronological development of the artist’s career and offers a journey through the major series that have defined his work. The exhibition is divided into two main sections. The first brings together images from the series *Other Americas*, *Sahel*, *Serra Pelada Gold Mine – Brazil*, *Workers*, *Kuwait*, *Exodus*, and *Children of the Exodus*. These are projects created over the course of his first twenty-five years of work, during which Salgado documented living conditions, humanitarian crises, migration, labor, and conflicts in various parts of the world. These images reveal a significant part of the artist’s work, characterized by a focus on human stories and social transformations.
The second section of the exhibition is entirely dedicated to *Genesis*, a project developed over the course of more than seven years. With this series, Salgado shifted his focus to landscapes, communities, and ecosystems that have remained relatively untouched by human intervention. “Genesis” is one of the most comprehensive works in his body of work and serves as a reflection on the relationship between humans and nature, as well as on the need for environmental protection.
The exhibition follows a concept that the artist himself summarized with the words, “Everything I have done, taken as a whole, is a reflection of my life.” The exhibition in Bassano therefore aims to provide a comprehensive overview of his work, connecting the various phases of his career and offering a synthesis of the photographer’s personal and professional journey. Accompanying the exhibition will be a catalog of the same name, published in Italian and English by Silvana Editoriale. An educational program aimed at various audiences is also planned, featuring initiatives designed to encourage a deeper exploration of the exhibition’s content.
The program also includes two film screenings dedicated to *The Salt of the Earth*, a documentary directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. The film traces the photographer’s life and work and received the Un Certain Regard – Special Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
The first screening is scheduled for Sunday, June 21, 2026, at 9:00 p.m., as part of the Operaestate film preview at the Giardino Parolini. The initiative is organized in collaboration with *Gli Stati generali della letteratura in Veneto*, promoted by Villa Angaran San Giuseppe. A second screening is scheduled for the fall at Metropolis Cinemas in Bassano del Grappa. The exhibition *Sebastião Salgado: Photographs from the Collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris* is sponsored and organized by the City of Bassano del Grappa and the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa, together with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and Silvana Editoriale, under the patronage of the Veneto Region.
“There are artists who do not simply photograph the world: they change it. Sebastião Salgado was one of them, capable of restoring dignity to suffering humanity and beauty to threatened nature,” says Alberto Stefani, President of the Veneto Region. “His photographs—from Serra Pelada to the Amazon rainforests, from the African exoduses to the Genesis of the planet—forced us to look at what we would rather not see, and they did so with an unforgettable beauty. The Veneto Region chose to sponsor this exhibition because it believes that bringing a comprehensive retrospective of his work to Italy for the first time, one year after his passing, is a fitting tribute to one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Bassano del Grappa is the perfect venue: a museum that, over the years, has built an authentic relationship with fine art photography and its audience, demonstrating that our region has the vision to look far ahead.”
“The exhibition dedicated to Sebastião Salgado, with its prestige and contemporary relevance, will serve as a fitting conclusion to an important year for our city in the cultural sphere,” continues Nicola Ignazio Finco, Mayor of Bassano del Grappa. “A year marked by the launch of our bid to become the 2029 Italian Capital of Culture and by the long-awaited return of Antonio Canova’s Colossal Horse . Amid this buzz of activity, we are ready to bring to life the spirit of an international artist, who recently passed away, through his works, which have left their mark by depicting the contradictions of a complex world that exists in a precarious balance between its wonders and its injustices. “We will thus continue a well-established and consistent program dedicated to great international photography and its most representative artists, in order to engage the interest of a growing and diverse audience.”
“Organizing an exhibition that, for the first time in Italy, will encompass the entire and complex artistic career of Sebastião Salgado represents an extraordinary milestone for our museum programming,” emphasizes Giada Pontarollo, Councilor for Culture of Bassano del Grappa. “Until now, in our country, the public has been able to admire this great artist’s work only in a partial way or through a focus on individual series. This comprehensive retrospective, however, offers an unprecedented critical and scholarly opportunity: it allows us to understand the stylistic and conceptual evolution of a master, bringing together the early Salgado—the social photojournalist—with the Salgado of his ecological conversion. With this initiative, Bassano del Grappa reaffirms its position on the national scene as a true center of cultural production, a hotbed of original, high-profile projects. It is a place worth visiting even from far away, to admire great international art and discover the beauty of a unique region.”
“The history linking Sebastião Salgado to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie is one of mutual and enduring commitment,” states Pascal Hoël, Head of Collections at the MEP—Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and Curator of the exhibition. “It bears witness to a rare trust between an artist and an institution, built over time around a shared vision of photography and its role in the world.”
“To be able to retrace, in a single exhibition, the fifty-year career of Sebastião Salgado means having the rare opportunity to deepen our understanding of some of the most intense and dramatic moments of our era through the eye of an undisputed master of international photography,” concludes Barbara Guidi, Director of the Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa. “His works are characterized by an unparalleled, magical balance between ethics and aesthetics and by the ability to portray the world with rare sensitivity and humanity: this makes each of his photographs an absolute masterpiece, a work of art capable of leaving a lasting mark on our consciences and, at the same time, leaving a lasting poetic imprint on the collective imagination. The Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa are proud to present, for the first time in Italy and thanks to a new, prestigious international collaboration, such a broad and comprehensive selection of works that bears witness, to the highest degree, the entire career of this artist, thereby adding a new chapter to our program of major photography exhibitions that make our museums a leading destination in Italy for this art form.”
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| Bassano del Grappa Hosts the First Italian Exhibition Dedicated to the Complete Works of Sebastião Salgado |
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