Salt Harvest

Every August the lake pulls back and leaves a white skin. For three weeks, a handful of families walk out onto it with wooden rakes.

I first came to Sivash by accident, following a road that ended at a weighing hut. Over three summers I returned to the same crews, learning to keep pace with a rhythm older than the road: rake, pile, turn, wait for the wind.

The work is quiet and punishing. The light is flat and total, and everything the eye can find is either salt, sky or a person leaning into one of them. I tried to photograph that scale honestly, without making the labour into a postcard.