Kuwait: A Desert on Fire — Sebastião Salgado

Shot in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Kuwait: A Desert on Fire is Sebastião Salgado’s searing chronicle of ecological and human catastrophe — a series of images that feel almost mythological in their scale and horror. Published by Taschen, this volume collects Salgado’s documentation of the oil fires ignited by retreating Iraqi forces in 1991: hellish black skies, molten earth, workers dwarfed by towers of flame, and the eerie, chemical sublime of a scorched desert rendered uninhabitable.

These photographs are not only reportage — they are theatrical, sculptural, and infernal. As always, Salgado’s lens humanises the inhuman, giving shape to the anonymous firefighters, engineers and laborers who entered this toxic inferno to bring the blazes under control. Every frame is thick with oil, ash and allegory — environmental disaster seen not as abstraction, but as theatre of war. In dialogue with Workers and Genesis, this book forms part of Salgado’s long, obsessive inquiry into the price of modernity and extraction.

Technical Sheet
Title: Kuwait: A Desert on Fire
Artist / Author: Sebastião Salgado
Technique / Printing Method: Offset
Medium / Materials: Hardcover with dust jacket
Dimensions (cm): Approx. 24.8 × 33
Language: Multilingual (English, German, French)
Publisher / Editor: Taschen
Condition: Very good