A sweeping black-and-white photograph by Sebastião Salgado captures the overwhelming scale of human labor at the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil, where thousands of workers — known as *garimpeiros* — swarm a vast pit like ants on a mound. The image, viewed from behind, reduces individual identity to anonymous, mud-covered bodies, emphasizing the collective physical struggle and the almost incomprehensible density of human toil. Rendered in Salgado's signature high-contrast gelatin silver print, the photograph carries both a documentary urgency and an epic, almost biblical grandeur.