Sebastião Salgado

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.