Sebastião Salgado: Genesis

Sebastião Salgado's Genesis is the culmination of 8 years work exploring 32 countries. It is Salgado's 3rd long-term photographic exploration of global issues, following his previously acclaimed collections, Workers and Migrations.

About 216 of Sebastião Salgado's black-and-white documentary photographs are on show in Genesis. They capture some of the furthest and wildest corners of our world, portraying indigenous communities that continue to live in accordance with their ancestral traditions, and showing rare insights into their lands.

During the 8 years in which Salgado travelled around the world to produce this collection of images, he often stayed with the people he photographed.

Salgado reflects: 'Many of us live in cities, cut off completely from the planet. My wish was to experience living with people with real links to nature... For me to go back to nature was a huge pleasure. I wished to present the planet in my language, photography. And so came Genesis.'

The exhibition's design follows the 5 themes in Genesis: Sanctuaries, Planet South, Africa, Northern Spaces, and Amazonia and Pantanal.


Sebastião and Lelia Salgado © Richard Beliel
Many of the places represented in Salgado's images are important research areas particularly for studying the variety of species biodiversity.