between the salt and stars

A few weeks ago (ie pre house-imposed-internet-silence), ABC arts covered photographer Murray Fredericks' project Salt. For a number of years, Fredericks made an annual pilgrimage to South Australia's remote, moon-like Lake Eyre. The lake is bare, and featureless, yet this very featurelessness makes it a blank canvas for the shifting colours of light throughout the course of the day and into the night. Salt is both an ongoing photographic project, and a documentary of Fredericks' time at Lake Eyre. As several reviewers point out, the resulting film becomes as much about Fredericks' emotional journey as it does about documenting the lake. Breathtaking natural beauty is juxtaposed with extreme isolation, not to mention the challenges posed by environmental conditions.

In addition to documenting the lake via still photographs, Friedricks also made several time-lapse films. Timelapse photography has always been a favourite of mine, and when you combine this with racing clouds and spiralling star streams the result is nothing short of amazing. I can't embed the snippets of time-lapse, but you can check them out via the website for the Salt documentary. Highly reccomended. At risk of sounding very lame indeed, I got that 'you-are-small-and-insignificant-punch-to-the-gut  feeling from them, well and truly. And, on that note, enough of me; time to be mesmerised by Fredericks' photography. If you scroll down to the bottom I've embedded the trailer for the documentary, which is also worth investigating.

images 1-3 from Arc One gallery's website
images 4-8 from the Salt website