Emma Phillips: SALT

Young Melbourne photographer Emma Phillips’ new body of landscape images is so striking in its minimalist visage that it almost borders on abstraction. Shot amid the dramatic manmade undulations of a salt mine, SALT hints at many of the tropes of the landscape and picturesque tradition, only for the subject itself – the huge, white mounds of glistening salt – to cause a slippage. It’s a familiar form, but an alien landscape. Phillips also traces fragments of industrial and domestic infrastructure within this strange environment. The arc of a conveyor belt juts obliquely from towering apex of salt; a caravan, itself blasted white, sits oxidising in the midst of a vast, sun-beaten, white plane; an orange digger chugs across an otherwise colourless frame. Phillips has used salt as an allegory – reduced and economised – for the Australian interior.

Australia –

Young Melbourne photographer Emma Phillips’ new body of landscape images is so striking in its minimalist visage that it almost borders on abstraction. Shot amid the dramatic manmade undulations of a salt mine, SALT hints at many of the tropes of the landscape and picturesque tradition, only for the subject itself – the huge, white mounds of glistening salt – to cause a slippage. It’s a familiar form, but an alien landscape. Phillips also traces fragments of industrial and domestic infrastructure within this strange environment. The arc of a conveyor belt juts obliquely from towering apex of salt; a caravan, itself blasted white, sits oxidising in the midst of a vast, sun-beaten, white plane; an orange digger chugs across an otherwise colourless frame. Phillips has used salt as an allegory – reduced and economised – for the Australian interior..

Written by Dan Rule

“Emma was one of the photobook-making workshop participants at the OBSCURA Photo Festival in Malaysia. By that time she had already produced a pretty large dummy photobook, which was beautifully done but only a single copy was made. To accompany her solo exhibition in Australia in November – this time she made 500 copies of the book. The best part is that we can now own this beautiful work in a book format.” – Yumi Goto on Emma Phillips’ book SALT.