On a very fortuitous day in 1970, 26-year-old Sebastio Salgado held a camera for the first time. When he looked through the viewfinder, he experienced a revelation: suddenly life made sense.

From that day onwardthough it took years of hard work before he had the experience to earn his living as a photographerthe camera became his tool for interacting with the world. Salgado, who always preferred the chiaroscuro palette of black-and-white images, shot very little color in his early career before giving it up completely. Raised on a farm in Brazil, Salgado possessed a deep love and respect for nature; he was also particularly sensitive to the ways in which human beings are affected by their often devastating socio-economic conditions.

Of the myriad works Salgado has produced in his acclaimed career, three long-term projects stand out: Workers (1993), documenting the vanishing way of life of manual laborers across the world; Migrations (2000), a tribute to mass migration driven by hunger, natural disasters, environmental degradation and demographic pressure; and this new opus, GENESIS, the result of an epic eight-year expedition to rediscover the mountains, deserts and oceans, the animals and peoples that have so far escaped the imprint of modern societythe land and life of a still-pristine planet. Some 46% of the planet is still as it was in the time of genesis, Salgado reminds us. We must preserve what exists. The GENESIS project, along with the Salgados Instituto Terra, are dedicated to showing the beauty of our planet, reversing the damage done to it, and preserving it for the future.

Sebastio Salgado traveled the Brazilian Amazon and photographed the unparalleled beauty of this extraordinary region for six years: the forest, the rivers, the mountains, the people who live therean irreplaceable treasure of humanity. Salgado described the Brazilian Amazon as “the last frontier, a mysterious universe of its own, where the immense power of nature can be felt as nowhere else on earth. Here is a forest stretching to infinity that contains one-tenth of all living plant and animal species, the worlds largest single natural laboratory.Salgado visited a dozen indigenous tribes that exist in small communities scattered across the largest tropical rainforest in the world.

He documented the daily life of the Yanomami, the Ashninka, the Yawanaw, the Suruwah, the Zo, the Kuikuro, the Waur, the Kamayur, the Korubo, the Marubo, the Aw, and the Macuxitheir warm family bonds, their hunting and fishing, the manner in which they prepare and share meals, their marvelous talent for painting their faces and bodies, the significance of their shamans, and their dances and rituals. Sebastio Salgado has dedicated this book to the indigenous peoples of Brazils Amazon region: My wish, with all my heart, with all my energy, with all the passion I possess, is that in 50 years time this book will not resemble a record of a lost world. Amaznia must live on.INSTITUTO TERRAFounded in 1998 at Aimors in the state of Minas Gerais, Instituto Terra is the culmination of Llia Wanick Salgado and Sebastio Salgados lifelong activism and work as cultural documentarians.

Through a scientific program of planting and raising saplings, the organization has performed a miraculous reforestation of the once infertile region and furthered the Salgados mission of reversing the damage done to our planet.