“In GENESIS, my camera allowed nature to speak to me. And it was my privilege to listen.”
—Sebastião Salgado
The International Center of Photography is the first American venue to present Sebastião Salgado: Genesis, his third long-term series on global issues. Our group – Tony Chu, Pun, Elyssa Sur – had decided to switch to this particular exhibition from the Asia Society exhibition, and boy were we glad that we did. After a little bit of research into the exhibition, we found that even at first glance, his photographs online were compelling, so we thought it would definitely be worth it to see them in person and in a larger scale.
The message Salgado desires toexpress through his Genesis project is for those living in this world to preserve what exists. His photography has shown us an entirely new meaning to how powerful one photo, or in his case, over 200 photos can be. Through over 30 trips travelled by foot, light aircraft, seagoing vessels, canoes, and balloons, he beautifully captures a collection of images that shows us a perspective of nature, animals, and indigenous peoples that we would never have even dreamt of seeing with our own eyes or face to face,even though everything he has captured is present at this very moment. The compilation of his Genesis project took 8 years to capture and select the photos displayed at the ICP now, and so many of them are simply just breathtaking. Each of us found that there was something sort of enchanting about each of his photographs. Salgado was able to successfully draw us towards his pictures to examine every detail. We thought that his landscape photography was stunning and the way Salgado captured the pure natural beauty left in the world as well as in distant cultures, strikes a stark contrast to how much of modern society has become distanced fromnature. The collection is not only a reminder of the natural beauty from which the earth roots its origins, before humans transformed the planet, but it is also the possible beginning of a movement to preserve the planet and protect its beauty.
~Tony Chu, Pun, & Elyssa Sur
