-We must remember that in the brutality of battle another such apocalypse is always just around the corner.- -Sebasti-Salgado
In January and February 1991, as the United States-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein-s troops retaliated with an inferno. At some 700 oil wells and an unspecified number of oil-filled low-lying areas they ignited vast, raging fires, creating one of the worst environmental disasters in living memory.
As the desperate efforts to contain and extinguish the conflagration progressed, Sebasti-Salgado traveled to Kuwait to witness the crisis firsthand. The conditions were excruciating. 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, and with characteristic sensitivity to both hu
