Sebastiаo Salgado. Kuwait. A Desert on Fire

Desert aflame
Sebastiao Salgado documents the torched Kuwaiti oil wells

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, sending billowing black clouds over the region and thousands of tons of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

As the desperate efforts to contain and extinguish the conflagration progressed, Sebastiao 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.