I'm not sure that every person here is familiar with my pictures. I want to start to show just a few pictures to you, and after I'll speak.
Nisam siguran da li je svaka osoba ovde upoznata sa mojim slikama. Želim da počnem tako što ću vam pokazati nekoliko slika, a posle toga ću govoriti.
I must speak to you a little bit of my history, because we'll be speaking on this during my speech here. I was born in 1944 in Brazil, in the times that Brazil was not yet a market economy. I was born on a farm, a farm that was more than 50 percent rainforest [still]. A marvelous place. I lived with incredible birds, incredible animals, I swam in our small rivers with our caimans. It was about 35 families that lived on this farm, and everything that we produced on this farm, we consumed. Very few things went to the market. Once a year, the only thing that went to the market was the cattle that we produced, and we made trips of about 45 days to reach the slaughterhouse, bringing thousands of head of cattle, and about 20 days traveling back to reach our farm again.
Moram da ispričam ponešto o svom životu jer će se to provlačiti kroz moj govor. Rođen sam 1944. u Brazilu, u vreme kada u Brazilu još nije bilo tržišne ekonomije. Rođen sam na farmi koja je više od 50% bila pod kišnom šumom. Divno mesto. Živeo sam sa neverovatnim pticama i životinjama, plivao u našim malim rekama sa kajmanima. Oko 35 porodica je živelo na ovoj farmi i sve što smo na njoj proizvodili sami smo trošili. Samo bismo ponešto prodavali na pijaci. Jednom godišnje, jedino što smo prodavali bila je stoka koju smo gajili, i tada smo putovali oko 45 dana da bismo stigli do klanice, vodeći hiljade grla, i oko 20 dana nazad do naše farme.
When I was 15 years old, it was necessary for me to leave this place and go to a town a little bit bigger -- much bigger -- where I did the second part of secondary school. There I learned different things. Brazil was starting to urbanize, industrialize, and I knew the politics. I became a little bit radical, I was a member of leftist parties, and I became an activist. I [went to] university to become an economist. I [did] a master's degree in economics.
Kada sam imao 15 godina morao sam da napustim ovo mesto i odem u malo veći grad - puno veći - gde sam završio drugu polovinu srednje škole. Tamo sam naučio svašta. Brazil je počeo da se urbanizuje, industrijalizuje, i poznavao sam politiku. Postao sam pomalo radikalan, bio sam član levičarskih partija i postao aktivista. Krenuo sam na fakultet da bih postao ekonomista, i diplomirao sam ekonomiju.
And the most important thing in my life also happened in this time. I met an incredible girl who became my lifelong best friend, and my associate in everything that I have done till now, my wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado.
Najvažnija stvar u mom životu dogodila se tada. Upoznao sam jednu neverovatnu devojku koje je postala moj doživotni najbolji prijatelj i moj saradnik u svemu što sam do sad uradio, ona je moja supruga, Lejla Venik Salgado.
Brazil radicalized very strongly. We fought very hard against the dictatorship, in a moment it was necessary to us: Either go into clandestinity with weapons in hand, or leave Brazil. We were too young, and our organization thought it was better for us to go out, and we went to France, where I did a PhD in economics, Léila became an architect. I worked after for an investment bank. We made a lot of trips, financed development, economic projects in Africa with the World Bank.
Brazil se brzo radikalizovao. Oštro smo se borili protiv diktatorstva, to nam je bilo neophodno. Ili da odemo u ilegalu sa oružjem u ruci ili da napustimo Brazil. Bili smo premladi. Naša organizacija je mislila da je bolje da odemo i otišli smo u Francusku gde sam završio za doktora ekonomije. Lejla je postala arhitekta. Radio sam za jednu investicionu banku. Mnogo smo putovali, finansirali razvoj, ekonomske projekte u Africi sa Svetskom bankom.
And one day photography made a total invasion in my life. I became a photographer, abandoned everything and became a photographer, and I started to do the photography that was important for me. Many people tell me that you are a photojournalist, that you are an anthropologist photographer, that you are an activist photographer. But I did much more than that. I put photography as my life. I lived totally inside photography doing long term projects, and I want to show you just a few pictures of -- again, you'll see inside the social projects, that I went to, I published many books on these photographs, but I'll just show you a few ones now.
Jednog dana fotografija mi je totalno osvojila život. Postao sam fotograf, napustio sam sve i postao fotograf, počeo sam da fotografišem ono što mi je bilo važno. Mnogi mi kažu da sam fotoreporter, da sam fotograf-antropolog, da sam fotograf-aktivista. Ali ja sam učinio mnogo više od toga. Fotografiju sam poistovetio sa svojim životom. Živeo sam skroz za fotografiju, radio sam duge projekte, i želim da vam pokažem još nekoliko slika videćete društvene projekte, zatim sam izdao mnogo knjiga o ovim fotografijama a sada ćete ih videti samo nekoliko.
In the '90s, from 1994 to 2000, I photographed a story called Migrations. It became a book. It became a show.
Devedesetih godina, od 1994. do 2000., fotografisao sam priču nazvanu Migracije. Postala je knjiga. Postao je šou.
But during the time that I was photographing this, I lived through a very hard moment in my life, mostly in Rwanda. I saw in Rwanda total brutality. I saw deaths by thousands per day. I lost my faith in our species. I didn't believe that it was possible for us to live any longer, and I started to be attacked by my own Staphylococcus. I started to have infection everywhere. When I made love with my wife, I had no sperm that came out of me; I had blood. I went to see a friend's doctor in Paris, told him that I was completely sick. He made a long examination, and told me, "Sebastian, you are not sick, your prostate is perfect. What happened is, you saw so many deaths that you are dying. You must stop. Stop. You must stop because on the contrary, you will be dead."
Za vreme dok sam ovo snimao proživljavao sam teške trenutke u svom životu, uglavnom u Ruandi. U Ruandi sam video totalnu brutalnost. Video sam hiljade smrti dnevno. Izgubio sam veru u ljudsku rasu. Nisam verovao da je moguće i dalje živeti, a napale su me i stafilokoke. Bio sam skroz inficiran. Tokom odnosa sa ženom nije mi izlazila sperma nego krv. Otišao sam kod doktora u Pariz i rekao mu da sam sasvim bolestan. Dugo me je ispitivao i rekao mi: "Sebastijane, ti nisi bolestan, tvoja prostata je savršena. Desilo se to, da si video toliko smrti, da sada i ti umireš. Moraš prestati. Prestani. Moraš prestati, inače ćeš umreti."
And I made the decision to stop. I was really upset with photography, with everything in the world, and I made the decision to go back to where I was born. It was a big coincidence. It was the moment that my parents became very old. I have seven sisters. I'm one of the only men in my family, and they made together the decision to transfer this land to Léila and myself. When we received this land, this land was as dead as I was. When I was a kid, it was more than 50 percent rainforest. When we received the land, it was less than half a percent rainforest, as in all my region. To build development, Brazilian development, we destroyed a lot of our forest. As you did here in the United States, or you did in India, everywhere in this planet. To build our development, we come to a huge contradiction that we destroy around us everything. This farm that had thousands of head of cattle had just a few hundreds, and we didn't know how to deal with these. And Léila came up with an incredible idea, a crazy idea.
I rešio sam da prestanem. Fotografisanje me je zaista uznemiravalo, i sve na svetu, i rešio sam da se vratim tamo gde sam se rodio. To je bila velika koincidencija. To je bilo vreme kada su mi roditelji ostarili. Imam sedam sestara. Jedini sam muškarac u porodici i ostali su zajedno odlučili da prepišu imanje Lejli i meni. Kada sam dobio zemlju, ona je bila mrtva, kao što sam i ja bio mrtav. Kada sam bio dete, više od 50% je bila kišna šuma. Kada smo dobili tu zemlju, na celom području je bilo manje od pola procenta kišnih šuma. Zbog razvoja, razvoja Brazila, mnogo smo naših šuma uništili. Isto kao što ste i vi ovde, u Sjedinjenim Državama, ili u Indiji i svuda u svetu. Zbog razvoja došli smo u kontradikciju i uništili sve oko sebe. Na ovoj farmi je bilo hiljade grla stoke, a sad samo nekoliko stotina i nismo znali šta da radimo. Lejli je sinula jedna neverovatna, luda ideja.
She said, why don't you put back the rainforest that was here before? You say that you were born in paradise. Let's build the paradise again.
Zašto ne bismo povratili kišnu šumu koja je ovde postojala? Rekao si da si rođen u raju. Hajde da ponovo stvorimo raj.
And I went to see a good friend that was engineering forests to prepare a project for us, and we started. We started to plant, and this first year we lost a lot of trees, second year less, and slowly, slowly this dead land started to be born again. We started to plant hundreds of thousands of trees, only local species, only native species, where we built an ecosystem identical to the one that was destroyed, and the life started to come back in an incredible way. It was necessary for us to transform our land into a national park. We transformed. We gave this land back to nature. It became a national park. We created an institution called Instituto Terra, and we built a big environmental project to raise money everywhere. Here in Los Angeles, in the Bay Area in San Francisco, it became tax deductible in the United States. We raised money in Spain, in Italy, a lot in Brazil. We worked with a lot of companies in Brazil that put money into this project, the government. And the life started to come, and I had a big wish to come back to photography, to photograph again. And this time, my wish was not to photograph anymore just one animal that I had photographed all my life: us. I wished to photograph the other animals, to photograph the landscapes, to photograph us, but us from the beginning, the time we lived in equilibrium with nature. And I went. I started in the beginning of 2004, and I finished at the end of 2011. We created an incredible amount of pictures, and the result -- Lélia did the design of all my books, the design of all my shows. She is the creator of the shows. And what we want with these pictures is to create a discussion about what we have that is pristine on the planet and what we must hold on this planet if we want to live, to have some equilibrium in our life. And I wanted to see us when we used, yes, our instruments in stone. We exist yet. I was last week at the Brazilian National Indian Foundation, and only in the Amazon we have about 110 groups of Indians that are not contacted yet. We must protect the forest in this sense. And with these pictures, I hope that we can create information, a system of information. We tried to do a new presentation of the planet, and I want to show you now just a few pictures of this project, please.
Posetio sam jednog dobrog prijatelja, inženjera šumarstva, da nam spremi projekat i tako smo počeli. Započeli smo sadnju i te prve godine izgubili smo mnogo drveća, sledeće godine već manje, i polako, ova mrtva zemlja se ponovo rađala. Sadili smo stotine hiljada drveća, samo lokalne vrste, samo autohtone vrste, izgradili smo ekosistem istovetan onom koji smo uništili. Život se na neverovatan način vratio. Bilo je potrebno da našu zemlju pretvorimo u nacionalni park. To smo i učinili. Vratili smo ovu zemlju prirodi. Postala je nacionalni park. Ustanovili smo instituciju Institutio Terra i napravili veliki projekat da bismo došli do novca. Ovde u Los Anđelesu, u zalivu San Franciska, odbijalo se od poreza. Sakupljali smo novac u Španiji, Italiji, u Brazilu. Sarađivali smo sa mnogim kompanijama u Brazilu. Oni, a i vlada, ulagali su novac u ovaj projekat. Ponovo sam oživeo i dobio veliku želju da se vratim fotografiji, da ponovo fotografišem. Ovog puta nisam želeo da fotografišem samo jednu vrstu životinja koju sam ceo život slikao: nas. Želeo sam da slikam i druge životinje, da slikam pejzaže, da slikam i nas, ali nas sa početka, iz vremena kada smo živeli u ravnoteži sa prirodom. Tako sam i krenuo. Počeo sam početkom 2004. a završio sam krajem 2011. Napravili smo neverovatnu količinu slika a rezultat je da je Lejla osmislila sve moje knjige i sve moje postavke. Ona je autor postavki. Ovim slikama želimo da otvorimo raspravu o tome šta to imamo iskonsko na planeti i šta moramo sačuvati na ovoj planeti ako želimo da živimo i da imamo neku ravnotežu u životu. Želeo sam da se vidi vreme kada smo koristili oruđe za kamen. Još postojimo. Prošle nedelje sam bio u Nacionalnoj Indijanskoj fondaciji Brazila i samo u području Amazona postoji 110 grupa Indijanaca sa kojima još nismo uspostavili kontakt. U smislu ovoga moramo zaštititi šume. Pomoću ovih slika nadam se da možemo da kreiramo sistem informacija. Pokušali smo da prikažemo planetu na novi način i sada želim da vam pokažem nekoliko slika iz ovog projekta.
Well, this — (Applause) — Thank you. Thank you very much.
Ovo - (Aplauz) - Hvala vam mnogo.
This is what we must fight hard to hold like it is now. But there is another part that we must together rebuild, to build our societies, our modern family of societies, we are at a point where we cannot go back. But we create an incredible contradiction. To build all this, we destroy a lot. Our forest in Brazil, that antique forest that was the size of California, is destroyed today 93 percent. Here, on the West Coast, you've destroyed your forest. Around here, no? The redwood forests are gone. Gone very fast, disappeared. Coming the other day from Atlanta, here, two days ago, I was flying over deserts that we made, we provoked with our own hands. India has no more trees. Spain has no more trees.
Za ovo moramo jako da se borimo da se održi ovako. Još nešto moramo zajedno ponovo izgraditi da izgradimo društvo, modernu porodicu društava, i odavde ne možemo nazad. Ali mi stvaramo neverovatnu kontradiktornost. Da bismo sve izgradili, mnogo uništavamo. Naša šuma u Brazilu, ona antička šuma koja je bila veličine Kalifornije, danas je 93 posto uništena. Ovde na Zapadnoj obali i vi ste uništili vaše šume. I ovde. Šume ariša su nestale. Veoma brzo su nestale. Dolazeći iz Atlante, pre dva dana, leteo sam preko pustinja koje smo mi napravili i izazvali svojim rukama. Indija nema više drveća, kao ni Španija.
And we must rebuild these forests. That is the essence of our life, these forests. We need to breathe. The only factory capable to transform CO2 into oxygen, are the forests. The only machine capable to capture the carbon that we are producing, always, even if we reduce them, everything that we do, we produce CO2, are the trees. I put the question -- three or four weeks ago, we saw in the newspapers millions of fish that die in Norway. A lack of oxygen in the water. I put to myself the question, if for a moment, we will not lack oxygen for all animal species, ours included -- that would be very complicated for us.
Moramo da obnovimo ove šume. To je srž našeg života, ove šume. Moramo da dišemo. Jedina fabrika koja je sposobna da pretvori ugljen-dioksid u kiseonik jeste šuma. Jedina mašina koja je sposobna da zarobi ugljenik koji stalno proizvodimo, čak i kada ga smanjimo, šta god da radimo, proizvodimo ugljen-dioksid, jedina mašina je drvo. Pre tri ili četiri nedelje sam postavio pitanje - u novinama smo videli milione mrtvih riba u Norveškoj. Nedostatak kiseonika u vodi. Samog sebe pitam, makar na trenutak, ako nam bude nedostajao kiseonik za sve životinjske vrste uključujući i našu, to bi bilo veoma komplikovano za nas.
For the water system, the trees are essential. I'll give you a small example that you'll understand very easily. You happy people that have a lot of hair on your head, if you take a shower, it takes you two or three hours to dry your hair if you don't use a dryer machine. Me, one minute, it's dry. The same with the trees. The trees are the hair of our planet. When you have rain in a place that has no trees, in just a few minutes, the water arrives in the stream, brings soil, destroying our water source, destroying the rivers, and no humidity to retain. When you have trees, the root system holds the water. All the branches of the trees, the leaves that come down create a humid area, and they take months and months under the water, go to the rivers, and maintain our source, maintain our rivers. This is the most important thing, when we imagine that we need water for every activity in life.
Drveće je veoma bitno za sistem vode. Daću vam mali primer koji ćete lako razumeti. Vi srećnici koji imate dosta kose na glavi, ako se istuširate, potrebno vam je dva ili tri sata da osušite kosu ukoliko ne koristite fen. Meni treba jedan minut i suv sam. Isto je sa drvećem. Drveće je kosa naše planete. Kada pada kiša u mestu bez drveća, za samo nekoliko minuta, voda nadolazi u potocima donosi zemlju, uništava naš izvor vode, uništava reku i vlažnost ne može da se zadrži. Kod drveća, sistem korena zadržava vodu. Lišće koje pada sa svih grana drveta stvara vlažnu površinu i mesecima su pod vodom, odlaze do reka i održavaju naš izvor, naše reke. Ovo je najvažnija stvar, kada shvatimo da nam je voda potrebna za svaku aktivnost u životu.
I want to show you now, to finish, just a few pictures that for me are very important in that direction. You remember that I told you, when I received the farm from my parents that was my paradise, that was the farm. Land completely destroyed, the erosion there, the land had dried. But you can see in this picture, we were starting to construct an educational center that became quite a large environmental center in Brazil. But you see a lot of small spots in this picture. In each point of those spots, we had planted a tree. There are thousands of trees. Now I'll show you the pictures made exactly in the same point two months ago.
Za kraj samo želim da vam pokažem nekoliko slika koje su za mene veoma važne u tom pravcu. Sećate se da sam vam rekao kada sam dobio farmu od svojih roditelja, to je bila farma, moj raj. Zemlja je bila potpuno uništena i isušena od erozije. Ali na ovoj slici možete videti, počeli smo da gradimo edukativni centar koji je postao veliki centar za zaštitu okoline u Brazilu. Ali na ovoj slici možete videti dosta malih tačaka, na svakoj smo zasadili drvo. Tu je na hiljade drveća. Sada ću vam pokazati sliku nastalu sa tačno istog mesta pre dva meseca.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)
I told you in the beginning that it was necessary for us to plant about 2.5 million trees of about 200 different species in order to rebuild the ecosystem. And I'll show you the last picture. We are with two million trees in the ground now. We are doing the sequestration of about 100,000 tons of carbon with these trees.
Na početku sam vam rekao da je potrebno da zasadimo oko 2,5 miliona drveća 200 različitih vrsta kako bismo obnovili ekosistem. Pokazaću vam poslednju sliku. Sada imamo dva miliona drveća u tlu. Radimo sekvestraciju oko 100 000 tona ugljenika kroz ovo drveće.
My friends, it's very easy to do. We did it, no? By an accident that happened to me, we went back, we built an ecosystem. We here inside the room, I believe that we have the same concern, and the model that we created in Brazil, we can transplant it here. We can apply it everywhere around the world, no? And I believe that we can do it together.
Moji prijatelji, to je veoma lako. Mi smo uspeli, zar ne? Kroz nesreću koja se meni desila, vratili smo se i stvorili ekosistem. Svi mi unutar ove prostorije, imamo isti interes i ovaj brazilski model možemo i ovde presaditi. Može se primeniti svuda. Mislim da zajedno možemo ovo da uradimo.
Thank you very much.
Mnogo vam hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)