MAGNUM OPUS
A SERIES OF LIMITED EDITION PLATINUM PRINTS BY SEBASTIÃO SALGADO
"MAGNUM OPUS" CONSISTS OF FIFTY SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS REPRESENTING SEBASTIÃO SALGADO'S MAJOR WORKS OVER FIVE DECADES OF PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPEDITIONS AROUND THE WORLD.
The images, a selection specially made by Sebastião Salgado and Lélia Wanick Salgado, include some from his two most recent series, Amazônia and Genesis, each the result of seven years’ work, as well as from older projects, such as Other Americas, Sahel and Workers. Also present are the well-know images from the Brazilian gold mine, Serra Pelada, and from the burning oil fields of Kuwait, set alight on orders of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 1991.
This is the first time that an important selection of Sebastião Salgado’s work has been printed using platinum-palladium, which involves a sophisticated method of printing recognized for its singular beauty and which provides a unique sensation to the eye of the viewer.
“When I take a photograph, I engage my entire cultural, human and social heritage”, Sebastião Salgado notes. “It is my life, my personality, my way of seeing the world that stand before what I am photographing. With all this and my sense of perception, I can compose an image. A photograph is taken in a fraction of a second, but you need a whole life in order to create it.”
