PARIS.- Polka Galerie presents Genesis an exhibition by Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. The result of an eight-year journey across the world, Genesis is a black and white photographic ode to the majesty and frailty of our earth.

When is father asked him to take over the family farm in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, Sebastiao Salgado discovered a devastated land rather than the paradise it had been in his youth. From this observation, in 2006, emerged the project Genesis. Unlike his previous works, such as Workers (1993) and Exodus (2000) that bore witness to the struggles of humanity in a modern world, this latest series is a monumental foray into nature and environment.

Through thirty-two trips, on foot, by boat, by plane or even hot-air balloon, the photographer and his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado, traveled the globe, sometimes in extreme conditions to "photograph everything that is still intact". From the arctic poles to Africa or the Amazon, they captured the magnificence of landscapes that, to this day, have escaped men’s grip and found "a primitive world, too often invisible".

Genesis is a love letter to our planet.

Sebastião Salgado was born on February 8th, 1944 in Aimorés, in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He lives in Paris. Having studied economics, Salgado began his career as a professional photographer in 1973 in Paris, working with the photo agencies Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos until 1994, when he and Lélia Wanick Salgado formed Amazonas Images, an agency created exclusively for his work.

He has travelled in over 100 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these, besides appearing in numerous press publications, have also been presented in books such as Other Americas and Sahel: l’Homme en détresse (1986), Sahel: The End of the Road (1988), Workers (1993), Terra (1997), Migrations and Portraits (2000), and Africa (2007). Touring exhibitions of this work have been, and continue to be, presented throughout the world.

Sebastião Salgado has been awarded numerous major photographic prizes in recognition of his accomplishments. He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States. In 2004, Sebastião Salgado began a project named Genesis, aiming at the presentation of the unblemished faces of nature and humanity. It consists of a series of photographs of landscapes and wildlife, as well as of human communities that continue to live in accordance with their ancestral traditions and cultures. This body of
work is conceived as a potential path to humanity’s rediscovery of itself in nature.

Together, Lélia and Sebastião have worked since the 1990’s on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. In 1998 they succeeded in turning this land into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra. The Instituto is dedicated to a mission of reforestation, conservation and environmental education.