Barbara Boissevain
Salt of the Earth Exhibit – A Visual Odyssey of a Transforming Landscape.
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 15, 2025, 2 – 5pm
Exhibit: Mar 15 – Apr 19, 2025
Book Signing, Artist Talk and Q&A: Saturday, Apr 5, 2025, 2pm
Barbara Boissevain in conversation with Ron Beinner
Curated by: Melissa Castro Keesor
Twenty years ago, in the South Bay region of San Francisco, the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project was established to address the impact of human activity on the diminished marshes of the Bay and the role wetlands play in protecting vulnerable communities from sea level rise. This expansive environmental project is the largest tidal wetland restoration project on the West Coast and is dedicated to converting over 15,000 acres of commercial salt ponds at the south end of San Francisco Bay to a mix of tidal marsh, mudflat, and other wetland habitats.
Barbara Boissevain in conversation with Ron Beinner,
Book signing, Artist Talk and Q&A Saturday, Apr 5, 2025, 2pm
SALT OF THE EARTH – A Visual Odyssey of a Transforming Landscape. Photographs by Barbara Boissevain Writing by John Hart, Michael Honegger, Laura Noble, and Elliott White Jr., Ph.D
“Salt of the Earth is Boissevain’s ode to the San Francisco Bay that tells a seemingly rare and hopeful story of combatting the effects of human-led climate change.”
—Lauryn Hill (WIRED Magazine Favorite Photo Books of 2023)
Since the 1800s, the ecosystems of the tidal marshes have been replaced by salt ponds, and in her new book, Salt of the Earth: A Visual Odyssey of a Transforming Landscape (Kehrer), California-based photographer Barbara Boissevain documents the efforts being made to return these spaces to their natural state. She thinks of her book, which explores the nexus of art, science and environmental activism, as a “love letter” to the San Francisco Bay where she grew up and raised her two daughters. In Salt of the Earth Boissevain set out to document humanity’s impact on the environment and raise awareness of the need for preservation of pristine spaces. In addition to the salt industry’s impact on the biodiversity in these regions, the natural systems of the wetlands are a barrier to the encroaching sea level and work much better than the man-made levees that existed to trap the salt water and harvest the salt for the salt industry.
“ Boissevain’s pictures pivot between abstraction and representation. With compositions varying from single images to diptychs, to gridded abstract aerial formations coalesced with macro, landscape, and underwater imagery. Together, they build a fuller picture of the ecological wonder unfolding, and they combine to form a harmonious circular narrative of conceptual realism, renewal, rhythm, texture, form, and color.”
– Laura Noble (LANG Gallery, London)
Boissevain began the project in 2010 with aerial photography taken from a helicopter. After several years of documenting the salt ponds in this way, she began grouping the images in grids based on palette to present another angle of transformation to the landscape. The high salinity environment resulted in color schemes she has called ‘apocalyptic.’ Then in 2020 she began photographing from the ground at the region’s national wildlife refuge created in the 1970s, and at the Ravenswood salt ponds bordering the Meta/Facebook headquarters. On her website, the artist points out, “These images hint at the vast technology sector that protrudes from the horizon looming just on the other side of the ponds. The cracked surface of the earth looks almost like an alien planet juxtaposed next to the opulent, manufactured structures cocooning the social media headquarters. The dystopian nature of these images reflects the dissonance between man and nature that I see threatening our planet and the disproportionate influence these companies have on our future.”
Barbara Boissevain is a contemporary visual artist and photographer, based in Palm Springs, California, whose work focuses on the impact of human activity on the environment. Nature’s ability to regenerate and reclaim human altered landscapes is a central theme in her work. Boissevain was born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Silicon Valley. She studied painting at Parsons School of Design in New York before immersing herself in photography, earning a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from San Jose State University. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Mémoire De L’Avenir, Paris; the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Galerie Numero Cinq, Arles, France; the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland; and the David Brower Institute in Berkeley, CA. In 2009 Boissevain published her first book, titled Children of the Rainbow, which documented the humanitarian challenges facing Quechua communities in Peru due to climate change. In 2021 her work was featured on NPR’s “The Picture Show” in conjunction with the UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland. She was also featured on the PBS News show Something Beautiful In 2022. Boissevain’s photographs are in public and private collections, including the Google Corporate Art Collection, Sunnyvale, CA; De Pietri Artphilein Foundation, Lugano, Switzerland; and Galerie Huit, Arles, France.
