Quiet photographer

"Do you know that you should admit your own smallness? In front of God, wisdom, beauty and nature, not in front of people. You should be aware of your dignity in the crowd. "

I have seen Salt of the Earth in the archives before. I don't often watch documentaries, but I especially like this one. Chekhov's sentence above is the best summary of this documentary.

Director wim Wenders's previous works include Der Himmel uber Berlin and A Musician's Life. This time, he aimed the camera at another person behind the camera, Brazilian photographer Sebastian salgado.

Salt of the Earth tells the story of photographer salgado, who photographed many human behaviors, from human persistence and inheritance to cannibalism, shocking poverty and ugly faces, and then photographed more beautiful and magnificent nature.

"His lens is an open eye of the soul, looking directly at the soul in the most subtle places, seeing the collective faces of 50,000 gold miners in Brazil, seeing the real hero of the oil well fire in Kuwait, and seeing the death of Africa. Every shooting plan is a long March, and people and gods dance together, and every result has caused great repercussions. "

Gold diggers, African refugees, scenes like hell in human society, thin men, crying women, behind black and white movies are compassion and despair. The documentary said that salgado and his wife came to France and lost everything to study photography. Later, they went to all corners of the world, the primeval forests of Indonesia, his hometown of Brazil, war-torn Europe, and beautiful Africa full of life-threatening poverty, in order to shoot the truly meaningful and worthwhile works in his mind.

He praised human nature, not suffering, but in his photography career, he gradually realized that human nature is like a bottomless pit with endless evils. For him, these poverty, killing and suffering are like a clean child who is curious about the world. He was pushed into the mire again and again, but he couldn't move again and again. Seeing the suffering squeezed him beyond recognition.

El Salvador is an excellent recorder. These photos have uncovered the ugly scars of human beings and aroused the vigilance of the world. However, he, in the words of director Wenders, stopped taking photos and returned to his hometown in Brazil with his wife and children when everyone thought he would continue this road and wake up the sleeping world with more similar photos, and planted trees on that increasingly barren mountain.

Human nature made him afraid, suspicious and stagnant, but selfless and rich nature gave him redemption and rebirth.

Later, he told the public that he was tired of filming human suffering. He wants to pay more attention to nature, the world, everything, rivers, mountains, trees, polar regions, birds and animals. At this part of the documentary, I looked at these photos on the screen and sighed. It is true that there is great beauty in heaven and earth, and the earth itself is much more beautiful and noble than human beings killing and persecuting their compatriots.

Of course, it is not that he doesn't care about human beings. On the contrary, he regained his confidence in human beings and humanity in the magnificent natural scenery. He photographed people living in a cruel natural environment, just as he was full of curiosity and pity when he pointed the camera at those who were in tears. He wants to convey new ideas through photos, which naturally deserves our concern. Having seen enough ugliness, we have the ability to rebuild more beauty.

Before God, before beauty and before nature, El Salvador acknowledged his own smallness and the smallness of human beings. Since then, he has not deliberately sympathized with others, hated or disappointed the crowd, but stood quietly in the crowd to safeguard his dignity as a human being.

Chekhov said this sentence really well, didn't he?

After the film was shown in the archive, the producer was invited to communicate with the audience. I remember an audience asked (a silly question ...) at that time, why didn't photographers continue to shoot those profound and heavy documentary works about human nature and shoot landscapes instead?

The producer's response is probably, first of all, this is the photographer's own business, and second, he thinks that human nature is not necessarily the only thing worth recording and profound.

I think the answer is obvious. Besides, as a negative person, I always feel that human nature is as despicable as how noble and profound it is. Feeling this problem, I wrote a short comment on the entry of Salt of the Earth in Douban:

"After reading all the disasters in the world, I sigh that talents are the most vicious and hateful animals. Why do photographers turn their cameras to everything in nature, just like writing love letters to the earth? Perhaps this is the best way to keep hope and redeem yourself. After experiencing too much despair, we need to look for confidence from another angle, but most people are not desperate enough to understand life. Salt is scattered all over the earth, but it is not enough, and it is justified. "

Many people think that it is a particularly remarkable thing to experience and gain insight into human suffering and persistence. What's even more remarkable about photographer Salvador is that he didn't stop there, didn't feel complacent about what he saw, recorded and did, and didn't use these experiences to preach to others. Instead, after recognizing the fact that my heart is barren and stagnant, I went back to my hometown to plant trees silently. After ten years of suffering and ten years of growth, it was like being reborn.

Watching the trees they planted for ten years grow should be like watching themselves grow and their hearts mature. The desert can be turned into a jungle again, and people can rediscover themselves because of introspection.

He is a man who obeys his heart, feeling his own needs, personal growth needs, aesthetic needs and self-realization needs, which are more important than the statement of "photographer of conscience" or "vigilante of human nature". How many possibilities a person can present depends on his exploration of himself and the world.

Presumably El Salvador hasn't read Zhuangzi, but I was surprised to find some similarities between them. In other words, the so-called beauty and scenery, the meanness and ugliness of the world, and the sad and painful experiences are all easy to see and think of, but the respect for life, the awe of nature and the exploration of the rarest beauty in the world may be higher, but most of them have been obtained.

Finally, I want to repeat this sentence:

"Do you know that you should admit your own smallness? In front of God, wisdom, beauty and nature, not in front of people. You should be aware of your dignity in the crowd. "