Genesis – Sebastião Salgado

From January 17th through May 4th, CaixaForum Madrid presents Genesis, a large-scale exhibition of works by Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado (1944) about the search for the origins of the world and the planet we inhabit.

Genesis is a tribute to the fragility of the planet. The show comprises black-and-white photographs of landscapes, animals, and people living outside of the modern world: vast and remote regions, intact and silent, where nature still reigns. Polar spaces and regions, tropical forests payday loans las vegas and savannas, burning deserts, glacier-crowned mountains, isolated islands.

As part of his interest in nature and after his projects Work and Exodus, Salgado established the Terra Institute with the purpose of re-foresting a 700-hectare rural property in Brazil. Genesis is, in many ways, a global corollary to the Institute’s work, since the idea emerged from that experience: to explore the beauty of the Earth.

Over more than thirty trips made on foot, by small plane, by boat, in canoes, and even onboard balloons, Salgado created a collection of images that present nature, fauna, and indigenous peoples in all their daunting beauty. Salgado offers a new dimension of black-and-white photography: his work is distinguished by tonal variations and contrasts between light and darkness.