NEW YORK, NY.- Yancey Richardson is presenting Genesis, an exhibition of works by Sebastião Salgado selected from the artistʼs eight-year project photographing the natural world in its pristine, untouched state. Since 2004, Salgado has travelled to dozens of countries, including some of the most remote regions of the globe, to photograph land and marine wildlife, arctic, desert, and tropical landscapes, and indigenous peoples still living according to ancestral traditions. Genesis is also a clarion call raising public awareness about the fragility of the planet, and the immediate problems of environmental degradation and climate change.
A large-scale travelling museum exhibition of Genesis is currently on view at the International Center of Photography, New York, curated and designed by Lélia Wanick Salgado, who states: “Genesis is a quest for the world as it was, as it was formed, as it evolved, as it existed for millennia before modern life accelerated and began distancing us from the very essence of our being. It is testimony that our planet still harbors vast and remote regions where nature reigns in silent and pristine majesty.”
Genesis, Salgadoʼs third in a series of long-term global projects, can be viewed as a response to its predecessors Workers (1993) and Migrations (2000), which explored displaced populations and the relentless working conditions endured by men and women around the world. In Genesis, Salgado has chosen to focus on the pristine beauty of the earth and those living in harmony with it.
Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944 in the Brazilian mining state of Minas Gerais. Initially an economist with the World Bank, Salgado began his photographic career in Paris in 1973. He worked with the Sygma, Gamma, and Magnum Photos agencies until 1994, when he and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado founded Amazonas Images, dedicated exclusively to his work. He has travelled to more than 100 countries for his photographic projects, resulting in many books including Autres Amériques and Sahel, lʼhomme en détresse (1986), An Uncertain Grace (1990), Terra (1997), Exodes (2000), Les Enfants de lʼExode (2000), and Africa (2007).
Travelling exhibitions of Salgadoʼs work have been, and continue to be, presented in institutions throughout the world, and his work is held in many museum collections including the Centre Pompidou, Chicago Art Institute, Museum of Modern Art, NY, The J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, among others. A feature-length documentary about the artist, directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, May 2014, and is currently screening in theaters worldwide. Salgado has been awarded numerous prizes and has twice been named photographer of the year by the International Center of Photography. Salgado is a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States.
