In the great river deltas and estuaries, there is a constant pull between the freshwater effluence and the saline tide. Fresh water, life’s most essential element, meets the sea to create a brackish borderland, a gradual in-between state of neither fully salt–nor entirely fresh–water. The gradation between fresh and salt water becomes a model for those of us for whom traditional borders have become increasingly arbitrary demarkations of cultural affiliation. Despite the current global reemergence of Nationalism, the concept of nationality actually has increasingly less influence on identity. Tribal connections based on national borders are eroding as migration and virtual connections create hybrid identities worldwide. We are all increasingly less river or sea than we are tidal delta.

I’m marking this transformative state of brackish water by using the photographic method of salt printing. Discovered in 1833 by William Henry Fox Talbot, salt print is an important part of photography, both in its historic value and in the tonal range it can provide. The best results can be achieved when the sodium chloride content is at approx. 2% and the silver solution is at 12%. Changing the ratio of salt to silver increases or decreases the light sensitivity of the paper, altering the appearance and density of the final print. By utilizing water at differing levels of salinity, depending on where it’s drawn from within the estuary, I’m producing a series of images with transitional clarity that would mark the strange borderland between river and sea.