These photos were taken by Sigalit Landau who submerged a black, antique-style gown into the Dead Sea for two years, turning it into a salty statue. The dress was retrieved after three months, and as you can see in the photos below, the transformation is quite significant.
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Two years later, the dress was removed from the sea, revealing its metamorphosis. In the dramatic 1920s production of the play, the lead actress wore a salt-encrusted gown, of which Landau’s black dress is a replica.
Landau said the dress soon appeared “like snow, like sugar, like death’s embrace”.
Fascinated by salt crystallization, Landau has made the Dead Sea a recurring theme in her work.
If you happen to be in London in the next few days, catch “Salt Bride” on display at Marlborough Contemporary until September 3. “Over the years, I learnt more and more about this low and odd place”, she said, in the press release. All jokes aside, what a brilliant idea by artist Sigalit Landau, whose efforts have since gone viral and produced an exhibition we can’t stop staring at. It is like meeting with a different time system, a different logic, another planet.
The Dead Sea, known for its mud and salty waters, which have transformative properties. The water’s hypersalinity makes it denser than ordinary water, which is what allows people to float. The initial salt crystal nucleus still contains a fair amount of water, but as more salt gets deposited and the crystal grows, that water diffuses out of the crystal matrix, according to that article.
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But it’s worth the trouble for the stunning final appearance of the black-turned-white dress. The result? A crystallized dress.
