In 1979 a child found a gold nugget on the banks of a river in Sierra Pelada, Brazil, setting off the largest gold rush in modern history. By 1983, an estimated 100,000 people were working in what was the largest open-air mine in the world. Brazilian photojournalist
Sebastião Salgado travelled to the mines where he took haunting pictures of the workers. His images capture the hazardous conditions in which they worked and the madness and chaos of the operation.
Landslides and structural collapses made the mine unsafe and it was officially closed. Today, Serra Pelada is a 140 meter-deep lake polluted with mercury.
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