Misk’i Kachi / Sal Dulce / Sweet Salt

One could say that Salzmann spent a lifetime preparing for the salt ponds Maras, and that his own name led him there. Salzmann, the “man of salt” whose ancestors in eastern Europe were probably salt brokers or salt merchants, became Salzmann the photographer, an expert in a process whose origins are the fusion of silver and salt. Salzmann’s artistic path was salty and sweet, taking him by turns through the aftermath of the Holocaust and the struggle for memory, to the sources of life in communities around the world. Perhaps it is not accident that he is called Salzmann. Just as salt preserves, so too do photographs. And in the best examples—as these images from the Peruvian pools—what photographs preserve is not the shell of what lived, but the aliveness within those shells, glowing in memory and anticipation.