Entre el 12 y el 15 de septiembre de 2018 tuvo lugar el III Congreso de Antropología de la sal, donde participé con una comunicación, en calidad de investigador independiente.
Como licenciado en Historia del Arte y Diploma de Estudios Avanzados en Investigación y Creación en Arte, no quise dejar pasar la oportunidad de recalcar un vínculo que suele pasar desapercibido, y sin embargo es la piedra angular del sistema de producción de imágenes que ha dominado los últimos cien años: el uso de la sal (cloruro de sodio) como agente fundamental durante la invención de la fotografía.
Este es el abstract (resumen) de lo que en breve aparecerá publicado en las actas del Congreso organizado por la Fundación Valle Salado de Añana que se celebró en Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Soto Madrazo, Jabi
Salt and sun: photography
Independent scholar (Basque Country)
There is a use of salt that usually goes unnoticed, but it has been the key for the development about 180 years ago of what we call photography. The history of physicochemical processes for obtaining images takes its basis in the use of halides that, in combination with silver, are darkened by the action of light. One of these halides is chloride, naturally present in what we commonly call table salt.
The 18th-century experiments evidenced light sensitivity of silver chloride, but it was not until 1834 that Henry Fox Talbot found the exact amount of salt and silver to create his first photogenic drawings, in what we might consider the protohistory of Photography. Salt is intimately linked to the origin and development of this technology that not only changed the way of seeing the world, but the way in which the human being is seen inside that world. In this way, the history of salt as a product of knowledge associated to the use of natural resources in the ancient environment of the Añana’s Salty Valley, intersects with the history of photography, closest in time but undisputed protagonist of the evolution of the human being in the contemporary era. Both histories are more alive than ever and with more points in common than a priori might seem. The purpose of this communication is to highlight the moment in which salt and photography converge to begin an exciting journey together.
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