This ongoing body of work continues to follow and document the effect of peoples passions and dreams on the landscapes. Whilst the majority of photographs in this series were recorded during Speedweek events on Lake Bonneville in Utah, they are not a comment or documentary of that particular event, as this is still work in progress.
The Bonneville Salt lake was formed during the last Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago. Hot Rodders first used the Salt Flats at Bonneville in the late 1940’s and have returned annually ever since. The organisers of the Speedweek events noticed that the quality of the surface had begun to de teriorate and shrink by the early 1960’s. Local Chemical Industries were found to be causing the depletion of the Salt flats through mining approximately 800,000 plus tonnes of salt each year in order to extract Potash in a network of evaporation ponds throughout the Salt Flats system.
The Hot Rodders tirelessly lobbied the State and Federal Government’s and local Chemical Companies to restore the flats to their natural state. Their efforts were rewarded when the Chemical company agreed to return the unused salts from the holding ponds back to the Flats which has begun the process of restoring the lake back to it’s natural state.