In & Of Nature
Cherry Street Pier, 121 N Christopher Columbus Blvd
September 1 – 30, 2023, Pier operating hours
In & of Nature is part of 20/20 Photo Festival 2023
Opening: First Friday, September 1, 5 – 7pm
Salzmann will be at 20/20 Photo Festival Book Fair:
September 30, 12 – 5pm to present his books.
AEGEAN STONES
Aegean Stones portrays a seascape in Western Turkey where forms of living organisms are mingled with mute stones within the sea. Through the refraction of light and the forces of nature’s gentle winds, and movements of variegated fish, these forms are transformed.
Each day the cool waters that wash these stones and the schools of small fish that pass them by furtively blowing kisses create a further patina of change and transformation.
The Aegean Blue series was inspired by questions of transience of life that one begins to contemplate when having reached a certain age or experienced a death.
CORAL: Windley Key Fossil Reef, State Park
In the early 1900’s, Windley Kay Fossil Reef Geological State Park, located on Islamorada, Florida, was the site of a quarry that furnished coral used in the construction of the railroad thatn crossed the ocean waters connecting mainland Florida to the Keys. Today, one can find many broken pieces of coral strewn about the wooded area that adjoins the quarry site. The coral tossed at random has taken on a life its own, as a kind of impromptu sculpture garden. Visitors’ own imaginations can find a myriad of forms in the coral detritus, which changes with the light and mood on any given day.
MIORITZA: An Icon of Romanian Culture
In the early 1980’s, Salzmann lived with the Shepherds of Poiana Sibiului, a mountain
village in Romania’s Transylvania region. At that time, the shepherds of Poiana practiced a traditional way of life that included annual migrations with their sheep between summer and winter pastures. The practice known as transhumance involves spending three to four summer months pasturing sheep on highland plateau regions, and rest of the year moving to the warmer climates in lowland regions.
Salzmann accompanied and visited with the shepherds during their migrations; he slept outside wrapped in a warm shepherd’s coat, among the sheep, sharing with the shephers their meals of mamaliga, a type of cornbread, with cheese.
In early spring, he witnessed birthing of lambs in the Dobrogea region of Romania, near to the Black Sea.
Salzmann’s book of photograrphs about the sheep is entitled, Mioritza, (Little Ewe Lamb), an important ballad in folk Romanian culture known to every Romanian.
GARIP: THE TURKISH SHEEP DOG
Garip,* a Karabash Anatolian Shepherd dog from the archaeological site of Gordion, was a gift from Salzmann’s wife, Ayse Gürsan-Salzmann.
He had told her not to bring a dog back from Turkey; she brought him anyway and it was love at first sight.
Many years later when he died, Salzmann thought it appropriate to return Garip home to Gordion. He accomplished by superimposing photos made of him over images made of his cousins the Kangal Çoban Köpegi that Garip had left behind many years earlier in Turkey.
SARGASSUM MUTICUM
Baja California, 2015
XILOXOXTLA: The Place of the Flowering Corn
Xixoxlta is Nahuatl word meaning “Place of the Flowering Corn.” As a young man when training to be a visual anthropologist, Salzmann spent two summers living in Santa Isabel Xixlolta, a small village on the slope of the Malince Mountain in Mexico’s state of Tlaxcala. Corn was a main stay of life for the people of Santa Isabel.
Years later, 2016-2019 when living in Maras, Peru, he photographed the corn that was essential to the way of life of the people of Maras. His reflecte abstracts of the corn plants present a new interpreation for this important food source.
MISK’I KACHI / SAL DULCE / SWEET SALT
On Salzmann’s first visit to the salt ponds of Maras near to Cusco, Peru, he was enveloped with a sense of mystical wonder at the way in which man had collaborated with nature so elegantly to create a multitude of ponds on terraced hillsides.
Salzmann has spent a lifetime preparing unwittingly for the salt ponds at Maras, and that his own name led him there. In what might be called a non-coincidental coincidence, he is called Salzmann, “man of salt.” He became a photographer, an expert in a process whose origins are the fusing of silver and salt.
FICTIVE ARCHAEOLOGIES
Fictive Archaeologies plays on finds found by archeologists. Salzmann takes his own finds in nature and then with a sleight of hand or what could be called camera magic imbues the object found with a fictitious meaning that makes it seem, (especially if a caption is used), that makes it seem a representation of something other than what it might have been. A fantasy conjured up in his mind similar to how a magician might work a trick to deceive his audience.
In this way Salzmann challenges his viewers to come up with their own intrepreation and meaningfor the photograph created, if they are so inclined to accept his challenge.
ECHELEGANAS:
Do Your Best
Salzmann’s Echelganas Do Your Best when relooked at in terms of this year’s 2020 Photo’s theme of nature reminds us that the people he photographed from the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico live in harmony with nature. A reminder to of us all too, to “Do Our Best”, to preserve the earth and nature to which we all belong.
