BOOK:Kuwait A Desert on Fire, Taschen Publications

When the Iraqi Army retreated across the Kuwaiti desert in early 1991, after being repelled by U.S.-led coalition forces in Operation Desert Storm, Saddam Hussein and his soldiers taken the military strategy of “scorched earth”, creating one of the worst environmental disasters in recent history, about 700 oil wells were set aflame, igniting persistent fires across Kuwait. Sebastião Salgado traveled to the Middle East to document to grueling fire-fight. He quickly realized how dangerous and brutal the world was that he just stepped into, a quagmire of health hazards, the air choked with soot, searing heat from the flames and desert sun, cluster bombs littering the sand.  The heat was so vicious that Salgado’s smallest lens warped. A journalist and another photographer were killed when a slick ignited as they crossed it. Sticking close to the firefighters, Salgado braved the intense danger, stench, pollution, and scorching temperatures to capture the ravaged landscape; the air choking on charred sand and soot; the blistered remains of camels; the sand littered with cluster bombs; the flames and smoke soaring to the skies, blocking out the sunlight, dwarfing the oil-soaked firefighters. The pictures first appeared in The New York Times Magazine in June 1991 and were subsequently hailed as one of the photographer’s most captivating bodies of work.  “Kuwait A Desert on Fire” is being sold as: “Art Edition” of 100 copies, each coming with a gelatin silver print from the photo series for $3,000,  “Collector’s edition”  of 1,000 numbered copies (No. 101–1,100), signed by Sebastião Salgado for $1,000 and as Regular edition for $59.-Dimitris Lempesis