Selected works from Salt Series
Untitled 11-20
Archival Inkjet Prints
20" x 30”
2016
I discovered white mountains by chance out of my car window in Boston, seduced by raking light on a white, crystalline material shaped by wind, rain, and heavy machinery. The mountains were made of de-icing road salt formed on the banks of the Chelsea River, shoveled off cargo ships traveling from the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, where I later learned the salt is mined. Over many months I observed as the piles were continuously removed and replenished from a seemingly endless supply; mountains emerging and disappearing.
Through the framing of the camera, the piles are monumentalized. The photographs are somewhere between the seen and imagined, confounding the shaping hand of humans with the shaping hand of nature. The piles are temporary, yet enduring. Thousands of tons of material travels thousands of miles to arrive on the bank of the river, waiting to be distributed throughout the city. The material is spread on every road, yet there is little thought of its history. These are stories embedded within the materiality of these ephemeral landscapes.