Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age by Sebastião Salgado, 1986–1992, documents manual labor across 25 countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Building on Salgado’s earlier work on Latin America and the Sahel, the project gathers a comparative record of work sites from Brazil’s gold mines and sugarcane fields to India’s dams, coal pits, and tea estates; from Rwanda’s tea plantations to French shipyards in Brest; Ukraine’s and France’s steelworks; assembly lines in Russia and China; Indonesia’s sulfur mines; and Bangladesh’s ship‑breaking beaches.
Conceptually, Workers examines dignity, risk, and endurance within systems of extraction and manufacture; interrogates disparities between industrialized and developing regions; and reflects on the environmental cost of production. By mapping how raw materials and goods pass through many hands before reaching consumers, it invites viewers to connect everyday consumption to distant labor.
Visually, the series employs high‑contrast black‑and‑white to articulate form, texture, and atmosphere—from crowded, serpentine lines of miners to close portraits of welders, steel pourers, and shipbreakers. Compositions often layer multiple planes in sharp focus, sustaining both individual presence and collective scale. Available light and pronounced chiaroscuro trace muscle, debris, vapor, and sparks, establishing a sober, workmanlike mood rather than spectacle.
Technically speaking, Salgado worked primarily with Leica R and M cameras, wide‑to‑normal lenses (roughly 28–60 mm), and Kodak Tri‑X (often at 200/400/800 ASA), supplementing with T‑Max at 3200/6400 in low light. He avoided zooms and flash, favored closed apertures for depth, and relied on extended on‑site immersion.
Reception was contested yet consequential: on publication in 1993 the book received the Arles Best Photography Book of the Year and an ICP Infinity Award for Publication (1994). Exhibitions opened with “In Human Effort” at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (1993) and toured to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Royal Festival Hall, and the ICP, amplifying visibility while debates over the aestheticization of hardship shaped its legacy.
