Sebastiâo Salgado
Genesis, public lecture: June 5 2008
Instituto Terra, public lecture: June 6 2008

See and Download Sebastiâo Salgado Lecture

Genesis is the symbolic name of the last work in progress by the world famous photographer Sebastião Salgado.
It started 2 years ago, on the Galapagos Islands, and will be going on for another 6 years.
After a lifetime photographing humans, these black & white pictures show now the respect for different species of animals, the heat rising from the lava, a kind of silent virginity.
For Salgado the only way to give people an incentive, to bring hope, and to make them understand what must be preserved is to show the pictures of the pristine and untouched planet, instead of polluting factories and deposits of garbage.

Instituto Terra is another long-term project: an educational center for environment that was born out of Salgado’s dream 13 years ago to rebuild the rainforest where his father's cattle used to graze.
Now that all the birds are coming back, the river is flowing again, the environment is working, his life has completely changed.
Thats’s why he invites all of us, companies and individuals, to join his dream and his spiritual rebirth.

Sebastiâo Salgado

Born in 1944 in Aimorés, Minas Gerais, Brazil, Sebastião Salgado studied economics in Brazil (1964-1967) and earned his M.A. in economics in 1968 from the University of São Paulo and Vanderbilt University (USA). In 1971 he completed his coursework for his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Paris and worked as an economist for the International Coffee Organization until 1973.

After borrowing his wife Lélia’s camera on trip to Africa, in 1973 he decided to switch to photography and joined the Sygma photo agency (1974-75) and the Gamma agency (1975-1979). He then was elected to membership in the international cooperative, Magnum Photos, and remained with the organization from 1979 to 1994.

Among his works: the book and exhibition “Other Americas” (1986), a meditative exploration of peasant cultures and the cultural resistance of Indians and their descendants in Mexico and Brazil; “Sahel: L’Homme en Détresse” (1986), fruit of a fifteen-month-work with the French aid group Doctors Without Borders; “Workers” (1993), a documentary shot in 26 countries on the end of large-scale manual labour; “Terra: Struggle of the Landless” (1997), a project on those fighting to reclaim their land in his native country of Brazil; “Migrations and The Children” (2000), a work on the plight of displaced persons, refugees and migrants in 41 countries.

Sebastiâo Salgado