Breaking Bad

Image from “Uncertain Grace” by Sabastiao Salgardo

If you are interested in documentary photography, you would have been saddened to learn of the death last May of the person I consider to be the greatest truth teller in the field, in the last 50 years, Sabastiao Salgardo. There’s a wonderful obituary in the New Yorker Magazine which also shows a few of his most recognised work. One set of images that doesn’t get a mention in the article is called “Uncertain Grace” and was made in the late 1980’s in Chittagong, recording the lives of the workers in Bangladesh’s ship breaking yards. It’s powerful stuff, and given the implied messages around generational misery stemming from the inhumane work practises, you might have thought that thirty five years down the track, the developed world had addressed the problem.

A recent episode of Dateline on SBS begs to differ. It’s half an hour of enthralling viewing, and believe it or not there’s a strong Australian connection.