Barbara Boissevain
These aerial shots are of industrial salt ponds that have existed in the South Bay since the1800's and are characterized by environmentalists as having taken away the lungs of the Bay. Currently they are a part of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, the largest wetland restoration program on the Pacific Coast which to date has restored over 3,000 acres and when completed will have cost over 100 million dollars. Over the course of the next sixty years, these salt ponds will go back to their natural state. Since 2010 I have gone up once a year in a helicopter to document this epic transformation and I plan to continue to go up once year to document these changes in the Bay as itÃs biodiversity dramatically increases.
Ghost Hanger
Barbara Boissevain is an internationally exhibited photographer who explores and documents environmental and social justice issues. In her ongoing project, Big Dirty Secrets, she highlights issues of toxicity relevant to the inhabitants of the Silicon Valley with the intent of fostering meaningful discourse about environmental stewardship. Her prior work includes Children of the Rainbow, a book and traveling exhibition that documents humanitarian problems facing Quechua communities in Peru. For her current project, The Trees Will Outlive Us, she photographs nature taking back abandoned human structures, imagining the future evolution of these relinquished sites.
Boissevain received her B.F.A from the San Francisco Art Institute and her M.F.A. from San Jose State University. Her award winning work has been exhibited across the United States and Europe including: Galerie Numero Cinq, Arles, France; the David Brower Center, Berkeley, CA; the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; Currents 826, Santa Fe, NM; the Phoenix Gallery, New York, NY; the New Museum Los Gatos, CA and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. In the summer of 2018, she completed an artist residency at Galerie Huit in conjunction with Les Rencontres de La Photographie in Arles, France.
Currently, she is an artist in residence with the City of Palo Alto’s juried Cubberley Artist Studio Program.
See www.barbaraboissevain.com, www.photoshop.com/spotlights/barbara-boissevain.