It is important what you eat now, what you do now. If we were interested in a sustainable planet where other generations have a right to a decent future, we would not live like this.
Interpretation
Our current dietary and lifestyle choices significantly impact the future of the planet and future generations.
In this quote, Sebastiao Salgado emphasizes the importance of our present actions, particularly regarding our consumption and lifestyle, in shaping the future of the planet. He advocates for awareness and responsibility in our choices, suggesting that living sustainably is essential for providing future generations with the opportunity for a decent life.
In practice
In a speech about environmental conservation at a conference.
I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It's very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it's there and it's not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love - all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there.
As in any person's life, there have been difficult moments: I have a son with Down's syndrome; through my photography, I have witnessed all manner of human degradation. But there have also been very happy moments.
There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won't photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.
So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence.
In the end, the only heritage we have is our planet, and I have decided to go to the most pristine places on the planet and photograph them in the most honest way I know, with my point of view, and of course it is in black and white, because it is the only thing I know how to do.
My way of photographing is my way of life. I photograph from my experience, my way of seeing things.
We the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency-a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential...the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising...Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on earth itself.
Then in October, Indian Summer, the air turned so soft, the sunlight so fragile, and each day's loveliness so poignantly doomed that even self-ignorance and restlessness felt like profound states of being, and he just wandered the empty beaches and misty headlands in a state of serene confusion and awe.
My heart is in a world of water and crystal, My clothes are damp in this time of spring rains.
I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.
For in their hearts doth Nature stir them so Then people long on pilgrimage to go And palmers to be seeking foreign strands To distant shrines renowned in sundry lands.
When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind.
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