Exhibitions: Salgado in Naples with 'Genesi', world in 245 photos
Naples - An eight-year journey told in 245 pictures. The power of black and white to tell the story of how the world started and to reflect on the future of our planet. "Genesi" is a tale by Sebastiao Salgado, the amazing documentary photographer who took ten years to complete this project, which started in 2003. The exhibition takes up two floors of the PAN art museum in Naples, where it will be open to the public until 28 January next. It comprises an ideal journey in five sections, the Southern Planet, the Sanctuaries of Nature, Africa, the great North, the Amazon and the Pantanal, which leads to extraordinary landscapes, amidst wild animals and virgin tribes. The guiding principle is the beauty of nature and the fragility of a world which may die unless we become more respectful. "I love photography - Salgado explains - I adore light, I adore composing pictures and I adore the possibility of describing the world with photography. But photography cannot remain an end in itself. Photos tell a story, but they are not only the mirror of society, they need to reflect to society what itself has offered and make it understand. To do this, for a photographer to be any good, he or she needs to be coherent with his or her story and have skills in social and human sciences... for any type of photography". Curated by Lelia Wanick Salgado, based on a project by the Contrasto agency and Amazonas Images, the exhibition is the result of a partnership between Civita Mostre and the Local Council Culture and Tourism Office of Naples. Mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, defines it as a "militant" exhibition, explaining that "you can set hearts on fire through photographs, putting free thought in motion and awakening the conscience of those who are still a little insensitive". A publication with over 1,000 illustrations is also dedicated to "Genesi". "Technology is the materialization of man's work", recalls Salgado, bringing to mind his background as an economy student and the Marxist view of human work. He states "I had the opportunity to focus on social studies before taking up photography and tying my entire life through photography to my ideology and my ethics". In the 1980s he set off around the world with his wife, at a time when a second industrial revolution was changing the way of working through technology, "producing total unemployment and capital concentration", he narrates. The global social base has changed and "I wanted to pay homage to these workers who had marked the history of humanity'. Back then, there was no talk of globalization, but the shifting of heavy industry from Europe to countries like Brazil, where the change was enormous".