Many people can agree that traveling is on their to-do list, and they constantly contemplate what it would be like to suddenly drop everything and pursue the endless sights the world has to offer. But few people actually go through with this, unlike one man, who truly left his life to make a difference in the world, and document it all in the process.

Sebastiao Salgado, a Brazilian-born economist who decided to ditch his office job for a camera, truly changed the views of millions of people around the world with his captivating documentation of communities around the world, many times working in some of the most pivotal times in history.

Leaving behind his wife and home in France, Salgado went to South America for his very first personal project, which he eventually published as a series of photos titled Other Americas. Here he focused on taking pictures of several communities in Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Guatemala. “The images range in subject, capturing spiritual and religious practices, changing rural landscapes, and intimate domestic life,” said Aperture Magazine.

Inclusively, Salgado made sure his work also made a lasting impact on the world, working with organizations such as Doctors without Borders when he was in the Sahel region in Africa. Here he documented the hardships and effect of widespread famine on society.

Salgado never failed to completely capture not only an image, but a whole person, and in all his photographs the emotions of his subjects nearly jump out at the viewer. “The strength of a portrait is that in that split second, we understand a little more of the person photographed. The eyes speak volumes, the expression of the face,” says Salgado.

During his constant journeys, which lasted between seven months to eight years, as in South America, Salgado encountered some of humanity’s worst periods of suffering, poverty, and more. In one of his projects, titled Workers, Salgado traveled to 23 countries, capturing the humanity of industrial workers, some working in extremely harsh and dangerous conditions.

Salgado’s projects proved to be very successful, and eventually he released a documentary in 2014 called Salt of the Earth. Filmed by his son, Juliano Salgado, Salgado tells his whole story and provides insight on his quests and how they made a mark on him. He left a message for the whole world to see in images, and managed to deeply capture the true nature of human struggle throughout history.