When someone asks you where you’re from, you can say – I’m from here – and show the wonderful photos of Sebastiao Salgado. And that’s no lie, we all belong to the world he portrays, untouched, simple and natural, even though we tend to forget that and feel far away, separated. But we do belong there, and when we see it, we remember. Just look at the photos, doesn’t that feel like home? There’s simplicity, beauty and peace of mind there. And unfortunately, most often this is the place we long for but feel we lost, and we feel guilty for being part of the cause of its destruction.

The photographer traveled to 32 of the most wild regions in this world. He gathered these amazing photos into Genesis, this photo series that he says it’s his ‘love letter to the planet’. And I can see the love and I can see the letter, because bottom line this photo series does not simply document the beauty of the untouched, but it projects the photographer’s vision of it. The photos are a representation of the untouched, not a simple account. Salgado’s representation. A beautiful one.

Most of the photos I selected for this post are from frozen lands. But there’s much more, amazing photos from Africa and South America. Here is a link to the book. And here is one to Salgado’s TEDx talk, not about Genesis, but about his devotion to documenting the dignity of the dispossessed.