Salt: Without it, life would have no flavor. More importantly there’d be no life, as salts play a crucial part in the world’s biology and ecology. But sometimes salt is a problem, as evidenced in a strangely entrancing photography exhibit at Berkeley’s David Brower Center.
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“Salt of the Earth,” by California environmental artist Barbara Boissevain, chronicles salt on the regional scale at the South Bay wetlands. Much of the area was historically used as industrial salt farms, as evidenced by the rusty-red evaporation ponds still visible by air. But lately a massive restoration project is bringing life back to the inhospitable coast, reinvigorating the marshes and inviting birds and fish and other creatures back to their former homes.
Boissevain’s nature photography captures these in-transition landscapes in vivid hues and alien geometries, from close-ups of jellyfish-looking crystal deposits to aerial shots of what scans like the surface of Mars. Local hikers might recognize their favorite stomping grounds, from Ravenswood Ponds in Menlo Park to Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Hayward. It’s beautiful, but also hostile and alien; perhaps one reason why Wired Magazine deemed her “Salt of the Earth” one of the best photography books of 2023.
Details: Show runs 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday until Feb. 13, 2026, at 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley; free, browercenter.org