LAKE EYRE SITS roughly in the middle of nowhere. It is not really a lake, but a salt pan. It covers more than 3,500 square miles of Australian outback, a vast expanse of parched earth and shimmering salt stretching toward the horizon. During the rainy season, when as much as 5 inches might fall, it fills with shallow pools of water that reflect the sky above.
It rarely fills completely, but the smattering of lakes create oases in an otherwise brutal desert. Murray Frederickscaptures this stunning transformation in Vanity, the latest in his ongoing Salt project. When heavy rain doused the lake–officially called Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre—twice last year, Fredericks made the three-day drive from Sydney with his mirrors and cameras to photograph the landscape. His dreamlike photos make you feel as though you’re surrounded by water. “You never see the end of the lake, never a change or a break to the horizon, nothing that allows the viewer to assess the boundaries or size,” he says. “It emphasizes the vastness of the scale.”
Fredericks first visited Lake Eyre nearly 15 years ago after a transcendent experience while honeymooning at Salar de Uyuni, the enormous salt flat in Bolivia. During an evening walk alone, he felt an overwhelming sense of release and calm, almost as if floating. Eager to repeat the experience, he traveled to Lake Eyre. It gave him the same expansive feeling, so he started photographing it. “I view the landscape as a medium,” he says. “It can allow the viewer to experience my emotional state, the state I was in when I was taking the photograph.”
Inspired, he started Salt, his ongoing exploration of the lake. He’s made 20 trips over the years, setting out when Landsat images show water on the lake bed. Last year he visited in June and again in September, bringing along a couple 70-pound mirrors each time. He and his assistant trudged more than hour through the shallow water until they couldn’t see the shoreline. They used sandbags to prop up the mirrors and mounted Fredericks’ medium and large format cameras on tripods about 20 feet away. He photographed the mirrors in the soft, golden light of dusk, and later in the evening, using seven-hour exposures on his large format camera to capture the movement of stars.
The extreme salinity required meticulous care. Fredericks made sure to thoroughly rinse his hands before touching his cameras, and took care to avoid splashing water with his boots. He also spent up to an hour washing the mirror before each shoot. Working in so remote a location, far beyond all human contact, for three weeks at a stretch poses its own challenges, but Fredericks loves being out on the salt. “It’s the most beautiful feeling in the world,” he says. “There’s a sense of freedom.”
His dreamy photographs convey the wonder and freedom he finds there. The middle of nowhere never looked so beautiful.
Salt: Vanity appears at Hamiltons Gallery in London through June 14.
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