Enough with the phoniness of so-called globalism — for something truly pro-Earth and pro-humanity, look at a photo by Sebastiao Salgado. He has been a towering giant on the terrain of modern photography during his 40-year career, producing astonishing black-and-white images of incomparable originality. Every one of his prints reveals a depth of empathy for humanity and the Earth — from workers at a Brazilian gold mine and at a Kuwaiti oil rig raging with fire to the voiceless victims of the Rwanda genocide.

For four decades, this man has pointed his lens at wars and famines, injustice and death, but his eye has somehow remained fresh, full of wonderment — almost innocent.

In "The Salt of the Earth," a documentary about his life and work directed by his son, filmmaker Juliano Salgado, and German auteur Wim Wenders, Sebastiao says, "Everyone should see these images to know how terrible our species is." His quiet intonation is gut-wrenching.

"Sebastiao's genius comes from a deep respect for people," Juliano tells The Japan Times. "I honestly think he has been gracious and kind with every single person he has come across."

Juliano was born when Sebastiao was making a career transition from World Bank economist to professional photographer.

"I knew at a very young age how special my father was," Juliano recalls. "He would go away for months at a time and then when he was ready to come home my mother and I would go to the airport to welcome him. He looked at the world in a way that was different from other people. His conversation was full of things I didn't understand, but I could sense their relevance. I grew up thinking my father was doing things to change the world for the better. For a long time, Sebastiao was my hero."

After Juliano's brother Rodrigo was born with Down Syndrome, however, Juliano went through long periods where he longed for a father with a more ordinary career.

"Sebastiao still went away for long periods because he didn't have the money to come back to us between projects," says Juliano. "In the meantime, my mother, Leila, had to raise us more or less single-handedly and that made me lonely and sad for my mother."

This relationship with his father is a subtheme in "The Salt of the Earth," showing how Juliano's early worship of Sebastiao morphs into admiration and respect for a fellow professional.

Initially he was ready to work on the film alone and limit himself to role of director, "but Sebastiao invited me to go along on his shoots," says Juliano. "I didn't want to at first — I had an idea that it would cloud my vision as a director of the film — but I went, and the decision worked well for the film, just as the decision worked to bring in Wim Wenders."

In the film, Sebastiao is shown his own photographs on a screen and for each he recounts the circumstances that went into taking the photograph and the impression it left. To make this work, Wenders — a camera aficionado himself — came up with the idea of seating Sebastiao in a black curtained alcove in front of a screen showing his photographs and a stainless mirror. In the documentary, Sebastiao's face is superimposed over his images as he speaks about them. It's a simple but artful technique, which Juliano describes as "a special time machine that evokes memory and reflection." It also proved crucial to the filmmaking process, as Salgado was self-conscious about being interviewed at the other end of a camera.

Though he discusses his works with a smooth, professional detachment, Sebastiao falters when he sees his own images of Rwanda.

"When he came back from Rwanda in 1995, Sebastiao was in a very bad way," Juliano says. "It was a different homecoming from all the other times. I had seen him sad and depressed before, but I had never seen him quite like that. He was suffering from a very great burden. It was as if he had lost all hope for life, and for humanity."

When he returned from Rwanda, Sebastiao did not show the pictures he took there to his family, and it was only after Juliano started working on "The Salt of the Earth" that he saw them for the first time.

"I could hardly stand the pain of those images," Juliano says. "But then I realized Sebastiao had been living with a much larger pain all these years."

Sebastiao has had his share of critics (Susan Sontag was one of them), who attacked him for dulling the senses of the viewer and creating a vast distance between the privileged who are able to watch the kind of global atrocities and inequality depicted in his images and the subjects who are suffering in them.

"But I disagree," Juliano says. "Sebastiao's great talent is that he takes pictures of relationships and people instead of facts and information. His photographs are not meant to be consumed, they are meant to nurture spirituality and maturity as human beings — just as he had to grow and nurture his own spirituality in order to keep doing what he was doing. In the end, photography's most important mission is to give the power of meditation, and that's what Sebastiao has tried to do."