Barbara Boissevain
Available Works
Photographer Barbara Boissevain recontextualizes urban and natural landscapes into abstract photographs. A Silicon Valley native, she uses photography to highlight environmental issues in the region. The aerial shot is of industrial salt ponds that have existed in the San Francisco Bay since the 1800'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 in the United States.
She also explores abandoned human structures as they decay and transform. This series began in 2016 by photographing her family farm located on Montauk Highway in Long Island, New York. During the summers of 2018 and 2019 she continued this series in France and Germany photographing a decommissioned coal factory, a Château in Normandy that was used as a headquarters for the Nazi’s during World War II and an abandoned abbey most recently used as a convelescent home.
Through the process of investigating these sites she looks for clues alluding to their pasts and imagines how they will be further altered by the passage of time. In post-production, she layers location specific elements highlighting the tension between the present beauty and the future evolution of these relinquished sites.