The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado opened Genesis, his series documenting Earth’s most pristine sites, last month at the new Shanghai Natural History Museum (until 20 December). The opening follows a two-year search for a suitable venue within the city. The problem was not local sensitivity about ecological topics or the nude people Salgado photographed, but rather the banalities of space and money. “It was not easy to find a place, but we found the best one,” Salgado said, in Shanghai during the opening.
The exhibition found an unlikely ally in Wang Weiguang, a Portuguese-speaking party official, former diplomat to Brazil and enthusiast of Salgado’s work. “Mr Wang spoke with the director of the museum, and the China Photographers Association, which allowed us to do it here,” says the exhibition’s curator, Lélia Wanick Salgado.
Images of Chinese environmental degradation can attract censure, but environmental purity, says Sebastião Salgado, “is not controversial. It is the place to speak about the environment, and the moment. They must start to take care of the environment here, and they are”, he says, citing reforestation he witnessed in Yunnan Province.
The natural history museum, which opened in April, is less squeamish about showing nudity than many big art institutions. “There was not really any problem,” Sebastião Salgado says, with all images cleared by censors for the exhibition (though nudes will not appear on the museum exterior’s LED screen). “We have had a few issues, like in the US you can’t show certain parts of butts, or in Arabic countries, but here there was no censorship.” Genesis will travel to Beijing’s Today Art Museum in January 2016.
