Iceberg between Paulet Island and South Shetland Islands on Weddell Sea in Antarctic Peninsula, 2005 (photo © Sebastião Salgado)
International Center of Photography
1133 Sixth Ave. at 43rd St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 11, $10-$14 (pay what you wish Fridays 5:00 – 8:00)
212-857-0000
www.icp.org
www.institutoterra.org
In a 2003 International Center of Photography lecture about a year and a half after his “Migrations: Humanity in Transition” exhibit at ICP, Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado said, “I came out of ‘Migrations’ very pessimistic about the prospect, for me, of the survival of the human species because I saw so many tough things on this planet. . . . After seven years on the road, seeing these things, I was a little bit disappointed with all the relations that we create between us and this planet.” Mr. Salgado and his wife, curator Lélia Wanick Salgado, further explore this relationship in “Genesis,” going back to the beginning for his third large-scale series. The eye-opening show, which fills both floors at ICP, consists of more than two hundred fifty primarily black-and-white photos of vast landscapes and indigenous peoples and animals divided into five sections: “Amazonia and Pantanal,” “Northern Spaces,” “Africa,” “Sanctuaries,” and “Planet South.”
Eastern part of Brooks Range in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, 2009 (photo © Sebastião Salgado)
Although the Salgados primarily let the dazzlingly composed photos speak for themselves, the images have a very specific mission. “As well as displaying the beauty of nature, ‘Genesis’ is also a call to arms,” they state in the exhibition catalog. “We cannot continue polluting our soil, water, and air. We must act now to preserve unspoiled land and seascapes and protect the natural sanctuaries of ancient peoples and animals. And we can go further: We can try to reverse the damage we have done.” And these are no mere words. Like the Genesis Device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which brought “life from lifelessness,” the Salgados are reforesting the Valley of the River Doce in Brazil, planting more than two million trees from more than three hundred different species as part of their Instituto Terra project. “‘Genesis’ is a quest for the world as it was, as it was formed, as it evolved, as it existed for millennia before modern life accelerated and began distancing us from the very essence of our being,” Ms. Salgado writes in the catalog. “And it is testimony that our planet still harbours vast and remote regions where nature reigns in silent and pristine majesty.” That “silent and pristine majesty” is on display in full force in the exhibit. Mr. Salgado, whose first large-scale series was “Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age,” goes back to the land for “Genesis,” pointing out that nearly half of the Earth “is still as it was in the time of genesis.” His photos often require extended viewing, as many contain striking details that slowly emerge only as one spends time with them. He frames his images with natural horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines that cut through the pictures like masterful brushstrokes, from a lightning-like river winding in between a mountain range in Alaska to a sweeping expanse of sand dunes in the Namib Desert in Namibia, from thousands of chinstrap penguins on an iceberg in the South Sandwich Islands to a close-up of one leg of a marine iguana in the Galápagos. Heavenly sunlight glows over a herd of lechwe in Botswana, clouds circle the Roraima Tepui in Venezuela, Zo’é women with poturu cones in their lips color their bodies with the urucum in Brazil, and a Yali man forages for food on a tree in West Papua.
Chinstrap penguins on Saunders Island in South Sandwich Islands, 2009 (photo © Sebastião Salgado)
“[‘Genesis’] is a visual tribute to a fragile planet that we all have a duty to protect,” Ms. Salgado points out, and after experiencing this exhibit, which includes a look at the Instituto Terra project, you’ll feel more responsible for the planet as well. In conjunction with the show, which continues through January 11, ICP will be hosting a series of special events. “Friday Evenings with Climate Scientists” features seismologist Arthur Lerner-Lam on December 5 and climate scientist William D’Andrea on December 12 examining specific parts of the exhibition, while Adam Harrison Levy will moderate “Frack Off!” on December 15, a panel discussion on fracking with photographer Nina Berman and Cornell civil and environmental engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea.
After many years away from the homestead, Harry Collings (first-time-director Peter Fonda) returns to his farm, only to find that his wife (Verna Bloom) has kept herself rather busy once she assumed he was not coming back, in The Hired Hand, a so-called hippie Western written by Scottish novelist Alan Sharp, who also wrote Ulzana’s Raid and Night Moves. Warren Oates is his usual fine self as Harry’s dedicated sidekick, Arch Harris, as they do battle with the likes of the evil McVey (Severn Darden). The quiet, beautiful Fonda is like a Zen cowboy, trusting in karma to right the world’s wrongs, but that doesn’t always work out. Fonda considers the film, photographed by a young Vilmos Szigmond (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Deer Hunter), to be a Greek tragedy within a Western; indeed, it’s a little gem that that goes way beyond the trappings of the genre, laying the groundwork for such later anti-Westerns as Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. The film is being shown November 14 as part of the Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “My Formative Years,” curated by artist Francesco Clemente in conjunction with his current solo show, “Inspired by India,” and will be introduced by playwright Neil LaBute. Clemente says about the film, “I’m in favor of psychedelia in all manifestations and to find psychedelia in a Western is always nice when it happens, but it never happens.” The film series continues with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain on November 21 and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom on November 28 (introduced by choreographer Karole Armitage), before concluding with Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA on December 5.
