World-renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado recounts his epic eight-year journey across the globe to document the last pristine areas of the planet. The resulting photographs, collected in the project Genesis, show us what will be lost if we do not mobilize now to preserve the environment.
Initially an economist, Sebastião Salgado (born Brazil, 1944) began his photographic career in Paris in 1973. He worked with the Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum photo agencies until 1994, when he and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, founded Amazonas images, dedicated exclusively to his photographic work. He has traveled in more than 100 countries for his photography projects, which, after being published in the press, are mostly presented in books—for example, Genesis (2013), Africa (2007), Migrations (2000), and Workers (1993).
Since 1990, Sebastião and Lélia have been working to reclaim the environment of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil by giving a plot of land they owned back to nature. In 1998, they made the area into a natural reserve and created the Instituto Terra, whose aims are reforestation and environmental education. In 2012, Sebastião and Lélia received an award from UNESCO for their work with Instituto Terra, and the “Personalidade Ambiental” first prize awarded by WWF Brazil. Salgado is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Science in the United States.
ICP has a long history with Salgado. We first presented his work in 1988 in a small exhibition of images of Brazilian gold miners. Since then, we have showcased his first two long-term projects, Workers (1993) and Migrations (2000), each of which illuminates pressing social issues. Genesis is Salgado’s third long-term series.
This event is part of the Fall 2014 programming series ICP Talks: Climate Change. For a complete listing of series events, visit www.icp.org.
ICP gratefully acknowledges our partnership with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society of Columbia University | Earth Institute, with the Institute for Public Knowledge, and with The Human Impacts Institute, Brooklyn, in developing and presenting public programs to accompany the exhibition Sebastião Salgado: Genesis.
Image: Sebastião Salgado, The eastern part of the Brooks Range, which rises to over 3,000 meters (9,800 ft.), The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA, 2009. © Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas images—Contact Press Images.