The first day of installation of the camp of Benako for the Rwandan Tutsi and Hutu Refugees, Tanzania

Gift of John Andrew MacMahon '95

The photograph captures the first day of installation of the camp of Benako for the Rwandan Tutsi and Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. The lower half of the photograph shows portions of the wilderness foregrounded by people setting up camp with tarps. The upper half is a rich scenery of rolling clouds framing the scene in the middle

The black and white and expansive nature of the photograph makes it a part of the long history of trauma photography effectively doing a disservice to the people who experience this crisis. The apparent strength of Salgado’s photography is that they exist in series and compel the viewer to not isolate the scenery, the context and the subject from each other.