When photographer Emma Phillips wandered into a salt refinery just off the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia, she felt as if she'd stepped into another world. The intense heat and shimmering surroundings made the landscape feel like a distant planet where terrain and sky intermingled in almost indistinguishable forms. Phillips happened upon the place during a cross country road trip in 2010, and immediately knew she had found something special.
“As soon as I walked around I had this epiphany and new what the project would be,” she said. "I sort of went into a bit of trance."
Phillips captured the quiet stillness of an an industry almost 6,000 years old. Somewhere around a quarter billion tons of salt is produced each year through mining or the evaporation of seawater and other mineral-rich water. The western portion of Australia, where much of the Nullarbor Plain is located, produces the majority of the country's salt. The plain is a desert, one of the most desolate regions of the continent. There are few trees---Nullarbor is Latin for "no tree"---and temperatures can reach 120 degrees in the summer. Phillips wasn't interested in documenting what specifically occurs within the refinery; she was after something more visceral, something almost painterly that spoke to what she saw.
"The place looked like some kind of abstract expressionist art," she said.
While some photographers will take months or years to complete a project, Phillips was able to work quickly for her series Salt. The quality of the light and the symmetry of the salt piles were perfect subject matter, and Phillips shot the entire project in a matter of hours with her Hasselblad. Photographers often are interrupted or shooed away from massive industrial sites, but Phillips was left relatively undisturbed as she worked. The only woman she saw there was happy to have her around and let her photograph whatever she wanted--- “I think she was just surprised to see another person,” Phillips said.
Phillips is fascinated with wide-open landscapes that dominate great swaths of Australia. She hopes series like *Salt *will remind people of locations often overlooked Down Under. “I think the landscape is often part of our general identity but people here are often unaware or disconnected,” she said.
