Glaciers: at Mart in Rovereto and Muse in Trento, Sebastião Salgado talks about the planet's custodians

In theInternational Year for the Conservation of Glaciers proclaimed by the United Nations, Sebastião Salgado ’s (Aimorés, 1944) new photography project becomes an exhibition-manifesto of visual and civic impact. Glaciers, curated by Lélia Wanick Salgado, is intended to be a powerful and silent tale of endangered beauty: more than sixty large- and ultra-large-format photographs immortalizing some of the Earth’s most spectacular glaciers, exhibited at two venues in Trentino, the Mart in Rovereto (from April 12 to September 21, 2025) and the Muse - Museo delle Scienze in Trento (from April 12, 2025 to January 11, 2026).

The exhibition is the brainchild of the Trento Film Festival and is produced in collaboration with Contrasto and Studio Salgado. The scientific and artistic coordination is taken care of by Gabriele Lorenzoni for the Mart and Luca Scoz for the Muse, with the participation of the Trento Film Festival, which enriches the initiative by inserting it in the heart of its 73rd edition (Trento, April 25-May 4, 2025), for which Salgado also signs the manifesto.

A global gaze, a shared responsibility

From the Antarctic Peninsula to Canada, from Patagonia to the Himalayas, from South Georgia to Siberia, Glaciers presents a black-and-white photo gallery that traverses remote and grandiose landscapes. With his usual compositional mastery and a black and white rich in depth and contrast, Salgado captures the muted majesty of glacial masses, essential elements of the global climate and hydrological system.

After Genesis and Amazônia, projects that celebrated pristine nature and indigenous cultures, Salgado returns to question the relationship between man and planet, producing a work that is both celebration and warning. Glaciers are not just landscapes: they are water reserves, climate archives, guardians of biodiversity. Their disappearance, accelerated by global warming, is an irreversible wound to the geological and cultural memory of the planet.

A double installation between art and science

At the Mart in Rovereto, more than 50 photographs compose an itinerary in which images, specially selected for this occasion, offer a global and poetic vision of glacial forms and volumes, with a visual language that, while documentary, intends to become contemplative and lyrical. The exhibition closes with a video room featuring a thematic selection of films curated in collaboration with the Trento Film Festival. Among them, Liliana Colombo’s Icemeltland Park (2020), awarded a Special Jury Mention in 2021, deals with the collapse of the Earth’s ice with innovative and ironic language.

At the Muse in Trento, the images are transformed into one large site-specific installation, suspended in the “Great Void,” the central space designed by Renzo Piano. The photographs, all taken in the Kluane National Park and Reserve (Canada), form a coherent cycle that expresses the sculptural and symbolic power of ice, standing at the crossroads of aesthetics, science and denunciation.

Accompanying the exhibition, a catalog published by Contrasto collects the photographs and critical texts, with an introduction by climatologist Elisa Palazzi, professor of Climate Physics at the University of Turin. The volume opens with Primo Levi’s poem The Glacier, published in 1946, chosen for its powerful emotional and symbolic connection to the theme of memory and transformation.

Who is Sebastião Salgado

Born in Brazil in 1944, Sebastião Salgado is one of the most important contemporary photographers. An economist by training, he has traversed the world with his camera to document humanity and nature, combining social sensitivity, scientific precision and visual impact. With his wife and curator Lélia Wanick Salgado founded Amazonas Images and Instituto Terra to promote reforestation and environmental sustainability. His projects have been exhibited in major international museums and collected in cult photo books, such as Genesis, Africa, Gold, Amazônia. In 2014, the documentary The Salt of the Earth by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado chronicled his life and commitment.

Through Salgado’s lens, glaciers are not just aesthetic subjects: they are living entities, fragile and vital, to be protected and listened to. With this exhibition, Trentino becomes a meeting point between photography, art, science and civic engagement, offering the public an opportunity to reflect on the beauty of our planet and the shared responsibility to save it.

Glaciers: at Mart in Rovereto and Muse in Trento, Sebastião Salgado talks about the planet's custodians

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