São Paulo – Sixteen never-before-seen photographs portraying the hard work of firemen coated in the oil that gushed out of wells destroyed by Saddam Hussein’s forces in Kuwait, 1991, shortly after the Iraqis pulled out of the country during the Gulf War, are featured in the exhibition Kuwait, a desert in flames, now showing at Galeria Mário Cohen, São Paulo. Picked by the author himself, the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, the snapshots were originally taken for The New York Times.
Upon being driven out of Kuwait in early 1991 by international coalition forces, Saddam ordered the oil wells destroyed, thereby inflicting huge environmental, social and financial damage. Some 600 wells were literally on fire for ten months straight. Some 6 million barrels of oil were burned each day.
To put out the fire and minimize losses, firemen from the United States, Britain and Canada, among other countries, were flown in. According to Salgado, they’re “the true heroes of the first Gulf War” and “the inspiration behind these photographs.”
“Theirs was the hardest task, but danger was everywhere. Two journalists and a few expatriate workers died while trying to cross the desert, as their trucks were engulfed in flames. Animals, including prize-winning purebred Arabian stallions, also suffered,” Salgado recalls in a wall text next to photos whose subjects include firemen, oil flowing out of wells, water being thrown on fire, and animals coated in oil.
“Even far away from the oil wells, we had to be careful with land mines and unexploded cluster bombs,” says the photographer, who travelled from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait in early 1991 to shoot the images.
The sixteen photos on show, plus others, are part of a namesake book – on sale in bookstores or at the gallery for BRL 259.90 (USD 77.48). “Sebastião Salgado is the most important photographer alive today, not only for this work, but also for other works such as Genesis and Workers,” says Mário Cohen.
Cohen says that Salgado himself contacted the gallery, the first in Latin America dedicated exclusively to photography. The pictures of what the photographer called the largest non-natural disaster he has seen will be showing at the gallery, free of charge, until December 20.
Quick facts
Kuwait, a desert in flames exhibition, by Sebastião Salgado
Galeria Mário Cohen
Rua Joaquim Antunes, 177, cj. 12
Monday to Friday, from 11 am to 7 pm
Saturday, from 11 am to 3 pm
The gallery is closed on Sundays and holidays
Phone: +55 11 3062-2084
http://galeriamariocohen.com.br/
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum and Sérgio Kakitani
