Terra: Struggle of the Landless

Salgado's latest title explores the heroism of farmers and workers in Brazil, a country where land distribution and wealth are incomparably biased towards the wealthy. His images focus on the spirit and plight of displaced agricultural workers, exploited goldminers, and others from the working disadvantaged class.

"Because death belongs to all, so too should life," observes Portuguese writer José Saramago in a preface to this remarkable volume of black-and-white images. But death is easy and life is hard in Sebastião Salgado's native Brazil, where exploitation of labor and mechanization of agriculture have combined to paint a bleak future for the country's rural population. Even the faces of small children are clouded with despair in this book, which is at once a testament to human courage and a powerful argument for agrarian reform--a long-promised and long-delayed reform that has led to a bloody struggle to take possession of unused land in private hands.