Book: Genesis – Sebastião Salgado

Jonny Allegra — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 16:58:53 +0000

GENESIS, the result of eight years of intensive travel, shows us now these last natural spaces – deserts, seas, virgin forests – that have still escaped the reach of our modern civilization, and the people and animals that live in them. “About 46% of the planet is still in the condition that it was when it was created,” Salgado reminds us. “We need to preserve what exists.”
Salgado has made more than 30 expeditions, in small propeller planes, on foot, by boat, in canoes and even in tethered balloons, braving climatic extremes and life-threatening situations to collect images that show us nature, wildlife and indigenous peoples in breathtaking beauty. Like Ansel Adams a generation before him, Salgado is a grand master of black-and-white photography. The shades and grays in his work, his contrasts of light and dark, are reminders of old masters like Rembrandt and Georges de La Tour.

GENESIS takes us to the archaic volcanic landscape of the Galapagos Islands, shows us the sea lions, cormorants, penguins and whales of Antarctica and the South Atlantic, the alligators and jaguars of the Brazilian jungle and the big wildlife of Africa. We encounter the isolated people of the Zo’é in the jungles of Brazil, the Korowai in West Papua, the nomadic people of the Dinka in Sudan, the Nenets with their herds of reindeer in the Arctic Circle, and the inhabitants of the Mentawai Islands west of Sumatra. With Salgado, we stand in front of the icebergs of Antarctica, the volcanoes of Central Africa and the Kamchatka Peninsula, along the courses of the Negro and Juruá rivers in the Amazon, in front of the canyons of the Grand Canyon and the glaciers of Alaska. All the time, energy and passion that went into the creation of this work make GENESIS Sebastião Salgado’s “declaration of love to our planet”.

>>> International Center of Photograph – Genesis

Interview TED – The silent drama of photography

Book: Workers – Sebastiao Salgado

Jonny Allegra — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 16:47:03 +0000

With Workers, Salgado brings us a global epic that transcends mere image making to become an affirmation of the enduring spirit of working men and women. In this volume, three hundred fifty duotone photographs form an archaeological perspective of the activities that have defined hard work from the Stone Age through the Industrial Revolution to the present. With images of the infernal landscape of an Indonesian sulfur mine, the drama of traditional Sicilian tuna fishing, and the staggering endurance of Brazilian gold miners, Salgado unearths layers of visual information to reveal the ceaseless human activity at the core of modern civilization.

Workers presents its subjects on several interactive levels: Salgado’s introductory text expands his passionate photographic iconography, and extended captions, also written by Salgado, provide a historical and factual framework. Evoking the monumentality of Baroque sculpture, images of oil-fire fighters extinguishing Kuwaiti wells are informed by data detailing this perilous venture. Heroic photographs of Cuban and Brazilian peasants harvesting sugarcane are enriched by an overview of the history of the sugar trade, which documents centuries of colonialist exploitation.

On the eve of the millennium, Workers serves as an elegy for the passing of traditional methods of labor and production. Yet its ultimate message is one of endurance and hope: entire Indian families serve as construction crews to build a dam that will bring life to their land, and laborers using contemporary technology connect England and France through Eurotunnel. Honoring the timeless and indomitable spirit of the manual laborer, Workers renders the human condition with honesty and respect.

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Sebastião Salgado – PHOTOS OF HUMAN PERSPECTIVES

Book: Genesis – Sebastião Salgado

Book: Workers – Sebastiao Salgado