This month there are international photographers on view all over London. The Brazilian Geraldo de Barros is at the Photographers’ Gallery, the American Man Ray is at the National Portrait Gallery and the Natural History Museum is featuring the magnificent works of another Brazilian, Sebastiao Salgado in a new show called Genesis.
Best known for his black and white photos of labourers toiling in third world countries, this exhibition is a different story as it focuses on nature and its beauty, and what remains of it in our world today. He has travelled for 8 years searching for images for this very positive view of our natural world, and the exhibition consists of 216 black and white photographs showing the majesty of places where landscape and wildlife are still unspoiled by humans.
For example, Salgado took this photograph of albatrosses in the Falkland Islands, which has the largest colony in the world at 500,000 mating pairs.
Sebastiao Salgado/Amazonas Images/nbpictures
This elephant in Kafue National Park in Zambia has charged a poacher’s vehicle and scared him off.
Sebastiao Salgado/Amazonas Images/nbpictures
The idea behind this exhibition is a charming story. As explained at the Museum’s site, Salgado started replanting his parents’ farm in 1990, after it had been destroyed by development in the area. Now he has replanted the rainforest with almost two million trees and the project is almost completed. As he explains:
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. In the end their history is our history. I believe it is important to preserve these forests, because if you go there it’s exactly as we all used to be – there aren’t many differences between us. It made me think we are destroying our planet to accumulate things for nothing. To survive and to survive well, to be happy, we don’t need all this.
Genesis continues at the Natural History Museum until September 8, 2013.
For all you amateur snappers out there, here’s an optimistic thought – Salgado’s stratospheric career was started by the simple act of his wife buying him his first camera in 1970…
About Bonnie Alter
