Sebastião Salgado Genesis Book

"In GENESIS, nature spoke to me through my camera, and it was my privilege to listen," said Sebastião Salgado. On a fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Salgado held a camera for the first time and experienced a revelation as life suddenly made sense when he looked through the viewfinder. Despite years of hard work to earn a living as a photographer, the camera became his tool for interacting with the world. Salgado, who always preferred black-and-white images, shot very little color in his early career before giving it up completely.

Raised on a farm in Brazil, Salgado had a deep love and respect for nature and was sensitive to the devastating socio-economic conditions that affect human beings. Three long-term projects stand out in his acclaimed career: 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 GENESIS, the result of an epic eight-year expedition to rediscover the untouched mountains, deserts, oceans, animals, and people of a still-pristine planet. Salgado reminds us that "some 46% of the planet is still as it was in the time of genesis," and emphasizes the need to preserve what exists. The GENESIS project, along with the Salgados' Instituto Terra, aims to show the planet's beauty, reverse the damage done to it, and preserve it for the future.

After over 30 trips traveled by foot, light aircraft, seagoing vessels, canoes, and even balloons, Salgado created a collection of images that capture nature, animals, and indigenous peoples in breathtaking beauty. In GENESIS, one discovers the animal species and volcanoes of the Galápagos; penguins, sea lions, cormorants, and whales of the Antarctic and South Atlantic; Brazilian alligators and jaguars; African lions, leopards, and elephants; the isolated Zo’é 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 Juruá rivers in the Amazon; the ravines of the Grand Canyon; and the glaciers of Alaska. Salgado calls GENESIS "my love letter to the planet," having dedicated so much time, energy, and passion to its creation.

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