Jonathan Taggart Salt and Earth

Jonathan Taggart’s Salt and Earth
(2008) offers an impressionistic portrait
of Whole Village, a contemporary
farming cooperative whose biodynamic
practices offer an alternative
to dominant agribusiness models.
Revolutionary in their “off the grid”
objectives, communal farms such as
Whole Village rely on the pooling of
member resources to achieve selfsufficiency.
In a late-capitalist society,
the collective’s lifestyle is exceptional
in its means, aims and commitment to
sustainability.

Shot from the hip and presented in
rich black-and-white tones, this series
depicts a community’s embrace of
ancient farming practices, extraordinary
in today’s short-term gain/hightech
culture. Slow, hand-wrought and
labor intensive, here everything old is
new, echoed even in use of analogue
photography. Sensual, close in, bathed
at times in sparkling luminosity, at
times in inky shadow, these scenes
move us along with the cycle of the
seasons. Simple acts and subtle tensions
play out through the everyday
lives of the community. Family-like,
yet not just one family, the collective
comes together and moves apart. In
Salt and Earth, the members of the
collective stand before us, quiet revolutionaries
in the face of environmental
peril, suggesting what may be a way
forward. Katy McCormick