Sana [ to Heal ] Body and Land is a photo documentary project I began in 2020 as I started consistently walking the shores of The Great Salt Lake in Utah. I had undergone cancer treatment in 2018-2019 and as I recovered the world was hit with Covid. Looking for places to be outside and away from others I began visiting the lake. There were not many people at that time, sometimes none, and the vastness of the landscape entranced me and I felt I could walk forever.
I was drawn to capture the vastness of landscape, as well as on objects, remnants and artifacts left behind. The lake and the dried lake bed surrounding it seem to hold so many secrets. There are stories here that may never be told. Rusted, metal bed springs jutting from dried sand…no trace of the fabrics that once covered them, broken glass from bottles over time now revealed, a toy truck, one lonely shoe covered mostly in sand. And then there are the mutated remains of trees, docks and piers that have taken on a stark and weathered constitution.
From a distance it may all look like barren sand but quietly walking and witnessing the changes the lake is undergoing also reveals a great deal of life. On the southern end birds can be seen dancing near the shore and then there is the magic of color and texture in the early morning hours. The golds, red tones of brine shrimp floating, Microbialites…once covered by salt water are often exposed now in the sun…after the thousands of years it took for them to form and become an essential part of this ecosystem.
Several times I traveled out to The Great Salt Lake with scientists to better understand what I was seeing. And asking myself: what is the connection between our own health and the health of the land around us? Can we have such huge shifts in the wellness of the Great Salt Lake and not expect it to also effect the quality of our own lives? As stewards of the land we call home this work seeks to explore the connection between dramatic shifts in the landscape and our shared human experiences.
2023
The work directly above is titled “Memory Remains” and was shown at the Sarajevo Winter Arts Festival in Bosnia in February 2023. As I walk the edges of the lake over the next year, gathering what imagery I can—I feel I am also bearing witness to the dramatic shift in the Great Salt Lake. Each discarded or decayed item I come across reminds me of cells in our own bodies that, when diseased, morph and become something else, something harmful. It is hard to imagine that this drying lake was in the heart of what once was called Lake Bonneville which measured nearly 1000 feet deep and 20,000 square miles wide.