Brazil 2002

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A photographer captures the coffee of his birthplace

Brazil is the top coffee producer in the world, and the birthplace of illy’s first quality and incentive award program designed to provide growers with the agricultural and business knowledge necessary to produce the world’s finest coffee beans.  It is also the country of Salgado’s birth. For these reasons, Brazil was chosen as the starting point of the In Principio journey which began in July, 2002. Shot in Zona da Mata and Patrocínio in Minas Gerais and Zona Venda Nova do Imigrante in the state of Espirito Santo, Salgado’s dramatic series of photographs document the green coffee harvest and capture the striking beauty and dignity of the land and the coffee growers who work it.

These mountain areas were once regarded as unsuitable for growing coffee, but are now recovered and fertile through the quality improvements illy and the growers accomplished together over the past ten years Salgado’s photos of women as they pick coffee cherries in the thick of the coffee plants, the large white sheets used for harvesting, and the beans bouncing skyward above coffee sieves are a fitting tribute to the resilient spirit of the Brazilian coffee growers.