Sebastião Salgado. GENESIS

Sebastião Salgado. GENESIS

<p>€œIn GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.€ €•Sebasti£o Salgado</p><p>On a very fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Sebasti£o Salgado held a camera for the first time. When he looked through the viewfinder, he experienced a revelation: suddenly life made sense. From that day onward€•though it took years of hard work before he had the experience to earn his living as a photographer€•the camera became his tool for interacting with the world. Salgado, who €œalways preferred the chiaroscuro palette of black-and-white images,€ shot very little color in his early career before giving it up completely.</p><p>Raised on a farm in Brazil, Salgado possessed a deep love and respect for nature; he was also particularly sensitive to the ways in which human beings are affected by their often devastating socio-economic conditions. Of the myriad works Salgado has produced in his acclaimed career, three long-term projects stand out: Workers (1993), documenting the vanishing way of life of manual laborers across the world; Migrations (2000), a tribute to mass migration driven by hunger, natural disasters, environmental degradation and demographic pressure; and this new opus, GENESIS, the result of an epic eight-year expedition to rediscover the mountains, deserts and oceans, the animals and peoples that have so far escaped the imprint of modern society€•the land and life of a still-pristine planet. €œSome 46% of the planet is still as it was in the time of genesis,€ Salgado reminds us. €œWe must preserve what exists.€ The GENESIS project, along with the Salgados€ Instituto Terra, are dedicated to showing the beauty of our planet, reversing the damage done to it, and preserving it for the future.</p><p>Over 30 trips€•traveled by foot, light aircraft, seagoing vessels, canoes, and even balloons, through extreme heat and cold and in sometimes dangerous conditions€•Salgado created a collection of images showing us nature, animals, and indigenous peoples in breathtaking beauty. Mastering the monochrome with an extreme deftness to rival the virtuoso Ansel Adams, Salgado brings black-and-white photography to a new dimension; the tonal variations in his works, the contrasts of light and dark, recall the works of Old Masters such as Rembrandt and Georges de La Tour.</p><p>What does one discover in GENESIS? The animal species and volcanoes of the Gal¡pagos; penguins, sea lions, cormorants, and whales of the Antarctic and South Atlantic; Brazilian alligators and jaguars; African lions, leopards, and elephants; the isolated Zo€© tribe deep in the Amazon jungle; the Stone Age Korowai people of West Papua; nomadic Dinka cattle farmers in Sudan; Nenet nomads and their reindeer herds in the Arctic Circle; Mentawai jungle communities on islands west of Sumatra; the icebergs of the Antarctic; the volcanoes of Central Africa and the Kamchatka Peninsula; Saharan deserts; the Negro and Juru¡ rivers in the Amazon; the ravines of the Grand Canyon; the glaciers of Alaska... and beyond. Having dedicated so much time, energy, and passion to the making of this work, Salgado calls GENESIS €œmy love letter to the planet.€</p><p>Whereas the limited Collector€s Edition is conceived like a large-format portfolio that meanders across the planet, this unlimited book presents a selection of photographs arranged in five chapters geographically: Planet South, Sanctuaries, Africa, Northern Spaces, Amazonia, and Pantanal. Each in its own way, this book and the Collector€s Edition€•both edited and designed by L©lia Wanick Salgado€•pay homage to Salgado€s triumphant and unparalleled GENESIS project.</p>