Images
©Tamsin Green
born of the purest parents (2016-18)
When I was a child I was fascinated by books about rocks and minerals. Books that talked about where they come from, how they were formed and their cultural importance. Inspired by what I found in these books, much playground time was spent digging up earth and trying to identify the uncovered specimens. Faced with fragments of rocks and minerals in daily life, I started to question if I would be able to find them again within their natural landscape.
Salt comes from the sea; dead, vanishing and living ones. As bodies of water appear and disappear they deposit salt. With the slow passing of time brine pools, salt domes and veined caverns emerge on the surface of the earth. Fundamental to human life, for millennia we have sought out these salt landscapes. Reliant on the natural world to provide for us, we built settlements in places where salt could be harvested.
I began mapping this unfamiliar geological terrain, the result of both natural processes and human endeavours. Born of the Purest Parents combines field images with photographs of found specimens and google satellite images to create an alternative guide to salt. Elevating an essential mineral that has shaped the history of human civilisation.
sit below the salt
Be of lower social standing or worth
‘paperback publishers used to be considered people who sat below the salt’
put salt on the tail of
Capture (with reference to humorous instructions given to children for catching a bird)
Images
Book
Self-Published in 2018
Handmade edition of 35 books
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