Salt

Every year photographer Murray Fredericks ventures to the middle of Lake Eyre, a desolate salt flat in South Australia. He pitches camp at its very core, with neither land nor water in sight. Fredericks’s journey isn’t a quest for high adventure or spiritual transcendence—this is clear whenever he casually picks up his satellite phone to chat with his family back home. Rather, he sets out to see—to really see—what happens in a place that might literally be the middle of nowhere. Between the long-distance quarrels with his wife and the hours of sheer boredom, Fredericks manages to find esoteric splendor with his camera. His catalog of stunning time-lapse cinematography and beautifully composed still photography is a kaleidoscopic array of brilliant color and subtle movement. Fredericks looks into the abyss and finds that, in the midst of nothingness, there is everything.