Genesis

I recently discovered the work of Brazilian photographer/ photojournalist, Sebastião Salgado. I know I've seen his work before, but it was always one piece at a time within the context of some article or something, and I never really took note of his name or bothered to look up who he was or see many of his works all together. As I hope you agree, his work is very moving.

Salgado works in the humanitarian and social documentary vein, seeking out indigenous cultures as well as impoverished ones, with previous projects including migrant workers, displaced peoples, famine and war torn lands, and political issues. He uses photography as a means to the end, utilizing its immediate visual story telling capabilities as a tool to further urgent political and social issue based discussion. (via Photography for a Greener Planet)

His newest project is entitled 'Genesis', in which he travels to remote locations in jungles, deserts, and ocean locations. He is attempting to is piece together a visual story about the effects of modern development on the environment. Hie kind of doing this in reverse though by trying to find pockets though that are still unaffected by globalization. He says in a New York Times article, “I have named this project GENESIS because my aim is to return to the beginnings of our planet: to the air, water and the fire that gave birth to life, to the animal species that have resisted domestication, to the remote tribes whose ‘primitive’ way of life is still untouched, to the existing examples of the earliest forms of human settlement and organisation. A potential path towards humanity’s rediscovery of itself. So many times I’ve photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet – to see the innocence. And then we can understand what we must preserve.”

I have included some photos from that project here, as well as some from a previous project, Migrations: Humanity in Transition.