Tuesday, 25 August 2009 02:30

In The Spectre of Hope Sebasti√£o Salgado joins John Berger to pore over Salgado's collection Migrations. Six years and 43 countries in the making (ranging across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America), Migrations contains photographs of people pushed from their homes and traditions to cities and their margins - slums and streets and refugee camps.

As Salgado explained in an interview:

“I want the person in the United States who is sitting at a restaurant with a young man from El Salvador, from Mexico, serving him, I want that person to see through the pictures that it is a long, long trip to come there and sometimes very dangerous. This young man working in the restaurant had the courage to move himself, to fight for his dignity, to fight for a job. I want the American to see that all these people moving around are moving somewhere to work, to produce, to give something to the country in which they want to live. This is the spirit in which I have created these pictures...”

As they sit at the kitchen table of Berger's home in the Swiss Alps, their intimate conversation, intercut with photographs from Migrations, combines a discussion of Salgado's work with a critique of globalization, and a wide-ranging investigation of the power of the image.

Directed by Paul Carlin, Produced by Paula Jalfon, Colin MacCabe and Adam Simon The Spectre of Hope is avaialable from Icarus Films