I use corrosive local rocks and polluted snow to show quick geological changes happening now. De-Icing the Surface looks at road salt on snow from Portland, Maine. Expired X-ray film and photographic paper stand in for Earth’s crust—fragile records that also react.

Treating the work like a field test and a forensic process, I collect grit- and salt-covered snow, melt it, pour the contaminated water over old silver-gelatin paper, then add measured amounts of sodium, calcium, and magnesium chlorides. The paper’s silver chemistry captures and crystallizes these brief encounters—salt and snow combinations that would otherwise wash into the city’s waterways.

The photographs record chemical events of salt building on ice crystals and the emulsion corroding in ways similar to soil and groundwater changes. These marks serve as analog evidence of contamination, showing how de-icing alters mineral balances and speeds weathering.

By using polluted snow, road salts, and expired photographic media, this project merges cause and record together: the material both triggers and preserves the change. The images are both aesthetic traces and material proof of how routine maintenance writes the chemical history of a place.