Sebastião Salgado, View of Pudong district from the Bund, Shanghai, 1998 The Whangpoo changes color with the seasons. Slight shifts in tone occur when the sky turns from the clear blue to cloudy gray, but the basic, overall transformation from a deep, earthen hue to a pure, limpid green corresponds to nature's yearly cycle. I rely on the changes in the color of the Whangpoo to tell me of the passing of the seasons. The interdependence between the river and the human beings who live along its banks is even more powerful: when they have drunk enough from the Whangpoo, fair-skinned people find that their faces have turned to the muddy yellow of its waters. The speed of the current also varies according to the season. A swift undertow with treacherous whirlpools sometimes lies hidden a mere twenty or thirty centimeters belw a placid surface, and people say that those unlucky enough to fall in are best forgotten: the difference between the surface and what lies beneath it is that great. At other times, usually when spring is turning to summer, the undertow rises to the surface and the river rages furiously along. At high tide, when the current is especially swift, the junks and sampans have to fight for all they are worth to keep from being carried away. --Kyoko Hayashi, from "The Whangpoo River SEBASTIÃO SALGADO has been awarded virtually every major photographic prize in France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States where he has twice been named Photographer of the Year by the International Center of Photography. Salgado was originally trained as an economist, and worked in developing nations for Brazil’s Ministry of Finance and for the International Coffee Organization. In 1973 he turned to photography to convey the plight of the world’s poor; his harrowing photographs of the Sahel famine in Africa during the early 1980s stirred an international call for aid to the region. Aperture published Salgado's acclaimed books An Uncertain Grace (1990) and Workers (1996), and will publish his Migrations in 2000. He lives in Paris.