State of nature
Beetles and Huxley host a retrospective of one of the most important photographers of the modern era
In an age when photography has never been so disposable, easy and quick, Sebastião Salgado’s work is testament to the treasures that can be reaped from taking your time. His Genesis series (which premiered last year at the Natural History Museum), took eight years to complete. During that time he traversed the globe in search of nature’s most dramatic subjects, from the snow-blanketed planes of Siberia to the canyons of the Nevada desert. Next month, Beetles and Huxley are hosting Salgado’s first major retrospective including photographs from Genesis and other series such as Workers, Terra, Migrations and Sahel. From Dorothea Lange’s four-year project documenting the Great Depression in the 1930s to Bruce Davidson’s two-year spell in Harlem’s run-down tenement blocks during the 1960s, many of the great phoptographers favour a patient, immersive methodology. This exhibition will confirm Salgado’s place as the righteous successor to the those twentieth century photographic trailblazers.
Pictured right: Dinka cattle camp of Amak, southern, Sudan © Sebastião Salgado; opens 8 October at Beetles+Huxley 3-5 Swallow Street, W1B 4DE