Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photojournalist, was committed to chronicling the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations and the environmental issues threatening our planet. His work has been published in innumerable magazines and newspapers, as well as in more than 10 books, many exhibitions and on distinguished websites. Mr. Salgado has won numerous awards in Europe, in Asia and in the Americas in recognition of his achievements and, on 3 April 2001, was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Mr. Salgado collaborated generously with international humanitarian organizations throughout his career. These include UNICEF, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), Médecins Sans Frontières and Amnesty International.

Collaborations include his exhibition in 2000 of 90 portraits of displaced children, from around the world, at UN Headquarters in New York. The following year, Mr. Salgado undertook a documentation of the global campaign to eradicate polio, working with UNICEF, WHO, Rotary International and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Publication of this story in major US and European magazines garnered unprecedented exposure to the campaign and sparked a surge in public donations. His images were featured in the campaign website, a touring exhibition, as well as The End of Polio book, continuing to raise the profile of the campaign and assisted in closing the remaining funding shortfall.

Mr. Salgado donated reproduction rights to several of his photographs for UNICEF-supported initiatives, including a poster series promoting the 2002 United Nations Special Session on Children and the Global Movement for Children and Graça Machel’s The Impact of War on Children, a book updating Machel's landmark 1996 report as United Nations Special Representative on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children.

Mr. Salgado died in Paris in 2025. He served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for 17 years.