Name/Title
The Gold Mine, Serra Palada, State of Para, BrazilEntry/Object ID
2005.47Description
"The Gold Mine" is from a series Salgado produced in 1986 titled ?Workers: An Archeology of the Industrial Age? in which he documented manual labor worldwide. This particular image portrays workers in Serra Pelada, an open-top mine in the Amazon region of Brazil. As many as 50,000 garimpeiros, or diggers, scrape soil from the bottom of the mine, fill their sacks, and lug their loads which weigh between 65 and 130 pounds up the 1300 feet of wood and rope ladders. The workers are paid an average of twenty cents per load, which is then sifted for gold. Garimpeiros earn an annual income of approximately $2,000. Since the unemployment rate of unskilled workers in Brazil is very high there is a continual supply of labor for these types of operations.Acquisition
Notes
Collection of DePaul Art MuseumEthnography
Notes
Brazil
South America, BrazilDimensions
Dimension Description
imageWidth
50.8 cmLength
60.96 cmExhibition
Realism and Magic: Latin American Photography from the Collection of DePaul UniversityInterpretative Labels
Label
The Gold Mine, Serra Palada, State of Para, Brazil
Salgado, Sebasti?o
1986
"The Gold Mine" is from a series Salgado produced in 1986 titled ?Workers: An Archeology of the Industrial Age? in which he documented manual labor worldwide. This particular image portrays workers in Serra Pelada, an open-top mine in the Amazon region of Brazil. As many as 50,000 garimpeiros, or diggers, scrape soil from the bottom of the mine, fill their sacks, and lug their loads which weigh between 65 and 130 pounds up the 1300 feet of wood and rope ladders. The workers are paid an average of twenty cents per load, which is then sifted for gold. Garimpeiros earn an annual income of approximately $2,000. Since the unemployment rate of unskilled workers in Brazil is very high there is a continual supply of labor for these types of operations.