The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Gold Serra Pelada, State of Parà, Brazil

1986, printed 1995

Sebastião Salgado

(Brazilian, 1944–2025)
Brazil
gelatin silver print
Image: 30 x 44.2 cm (11 13/16 x 17 3/8 in.); Paper: 39.8 x 50.2 cm (15 11/16 x 19 3/4 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
The Julius L. Greenfield Photography Acquisition Fund 1995.83
© Sebastiào Salgado
Location: Not on view

Description

Perhaps more than those of any other living photographer, Sebastião Salgado's photographs of the world's poor make a compassionate statement on the human condition. In his images, the artist chronicles the large-scale use of manual labor in pre-industrial Third World countries. Here, loaded down with bags of earth and mud, over 50,000 men are reduced to the size of ants as they climb up and down the walls of gigantic, terraced pits on primitive ladders in the gold mines of Serra Pelada.
  • (Peter Fetterman Photographic Works of Art, Santa Monica, CA)
    December 4, 1995
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996. Reproduced: P. 313
  • CMA, November 20,1996 - February 2, 1997: "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art."
    Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997).
  • {{cite web|title=Gold Serra Pelada, State of Parà, Brazil|url=false|author=Sebastião Salgado|year=1986, printed 1995|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1995.83