‘Salt of the Earth’ brings unusual nature images to Berkeley

The images present “Salt of the Earth” by Barbara Boissevain runs till Feb. 2026 on the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Calif. Pictured: “Alien Saltscape III” by Barbara Boissevain. (Courtesy the artist/David Brower Center)

Salt: Without it, life would don’t have any taste. More importantly there’d be no life, as salts play a vital half on this planet’s biology and ecology. But generally salt is an issue, as evidenced in a unusually entrancing images exhibit at Berkeley’s David Brower Center.

“Salt of the Earth,” by California environmental artist Barbara Boissevain, chronicles salt on the regional scale on the South Bay wetlands. Much of the realm was traditionally used as industrial salt farms, as evidenced by the rusty-red evaporation ponds nonetheless seen by air. But recently a large restoration mission is bringing life again to the inhospitable coast, reinvigorating the marshes and welcoming birds and fish and different creatures again to their former properties.

Boissevain’s nature images captures these in-transition landscapes in vivid hues and alien geometries, from close-ups of jellyfish-looking crystal deposits to aerial photographs of what scans just like the floor of Mars. Local hikers would possibly acknowledge their favourite stomping grounds, from Ravenswood Ponds in Menlo Park to Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Hayward. It’s lovely, but in addition hostile and alien; maybe one cause why Wired Magazine deemed her “Salt of the Earth” probably the greatest images books of 2023.

Details: Show runs 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Thursday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday till Feb. 13, 2026, at 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley; free, browercenter.org

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