“And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

In The Salt Series, German photographer Tom Hegen took aerial photographs of salt production. Photographed on a hovering DJI drone, his pictures document salt production across Europe.

“What attracted me was the graphic and abstract appearance of these landscapes, which almost has a painterly quality,” he says. “This is also the core feature that aerial photography has to offer: an unfamiliar few at ordinary things that surround us,.”

Above:

The picture shows the effect of the salt industry on land at Aigues-Mortes near Montpellier in the south of France. Salt has been processed from the marshes since Roman times.

To create the region’s Fleur de Sel,, seawater is channelled through 45 miles (70km) of canals. During summer a thin film of crystals forms on the surface of the salty waters. It is then hand-harvested by salt workers.

Above:

The marshes of Guérande and Marennes-Oléron on the French Atlantic coast. These wetlands have been used for sea salt production for centuries. Man-made waterways, dams and pools are fed by the sea. In spring, the pools are flooded. A small but constant change in level let the water to flow into the evaporation ponds, which act as a reserve. Once the water evaporates, the seawater reaches a concentration level at which the salt crystallizes and becomes harvestable.

“I draw my inspiration from classic painters like Mark Rothko. I see all human beings as designers of our planet. And I see myself as a sort of framer, framing the artworks of the earth’s surface with my camera.”

– Tom Hegen

“I am attracted by the abstraction that comes with the change of perspective; seeing something familiar from a new vantage point that you are not used to. A drone just enables you to see more.”

– Tom Hegen, Salt

“Working in a series allows me to go deeper into one specific theme. Most of my work is based on a story of the relationship between human and nature. The single image is of great importance to me but working with a set of images let me show different aspects of one scenery. I am convinced that a series allows expressing the art of the photographer much better than a single image, as a series is more personalized.”

– Tom Hegen

“‘Land’ is actually a word of Germanic origin and the roots of the suffix ‘-scape’, refers to the verb ‘shaping’. So landscape in a sense of landscaping refers to an activity that modifies the visible features of an area by man. As a consequence of that, I started seeing landscape photography of documenting places influenced by human rather than landscape photography as showing pure, unspoiled nature.”

– Tom Hegen

Via the printspace, capture landscapes ,

You can buy prints on Hegen’s site.