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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Ninety: 101 ways to interpret Bolivia > On the Great Salar, Uyuni, Bolivia, 2014
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23-MAY-2014

On the Great Salar, Uyuni, Bolivia, 2014

The Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat, over 4,000 square miles in size. Sitting at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, this amazing place is actually an extension of the Bolivian Altiplano, the floor of a vast prehistoric lake. It is one of Bolivia’s few major tourist attractions, drawing visitors from all over the world. Many of them stay in hotels made almost entirely of salt. I stayed in one of them, and made this image through one of its viewing areas. I interpret this vast salt flat by using scale incongruity to stress its size. I compare the salt flat itself to the size of a distant mountain, which is actually in Chile, as well as to a yellow tourist bus, which is dwarfed by the landscape. By shooting just after sunset, I was able to emphasize the colors of the sky and clouds, comparing their beauty to the dull gray color of the salt flat itself, and the brownish salt marsh at its margins.

FujiFilm X-M1
1/420s f/8.0 at 230.0mm iso1600 full exif

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Phil Douglis03-Aug-2014 21:19
Yes, it's not only the staggering sense of scale incongruity that makes this image expressive. It is also the subtlety of color that comes just after the sun has gone down. And yes, there is indeed desolation and isolation at the core of this image, and when we combine this bleakness with the beauty of those colors, the picture does indeed express exactly how I felt about this place. Ironically, this is the sole photograph that survives from my visit to the Great Salar of Bolivia. The next morning, we went out onto the great salt flat before dawn, and I was able to make hundreds of images evoking a sense of space and the work of nature by shooting at the very core of it and in spectacular light as well. Unfortunately I was to lose that entire day's worth of salt flat pictures when my memory card cracked internally while loading it on to my computer. It was obviously brittle and on its last legs. My mishap offers an important lesson to us -- always replace our memory cards at least annually. To try to extend the life of a memory card by using it over and over across a number of years may by penny wise but certainly pound foolish. Fortunately, I at least have this sole image of the Great Salar, which I had made the evening before, to best express how I felt about this amazing place.
Cecilia Lim01-Aug-2014 22:07
What a tremendous sense of desolation and isolation you're expressing here. And it's so incongruous to see man's presence here. I think the subtlety of color adds to the strangeness of this oddly beautiful place.
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