WATCH: Award winning photographer shows the grass is not always greener on the other side
Image by Kelly-Jane Turner Image by Kelly-Jane Turner
“South Africans were very quick to say to me, ‘why would you leave America for this?’ and it's to those people I want this project to be a reminder that in fact the grass is not always greener on the other side,” said award winning photographer Barry Salzman.
Salzman’s photographic series ‘The Other Side of Christmas’ is currently on display at the Deepest Darkest Gallery in Cape Town until 28 December 2019.
The images were taken between October and December of 2014 during a road trip Salzman took across the southern states of America. He wanted to offer a critique of the American Dream.
“This body of work is my personal exploration of what America means.The title comes from the fact that some of the images were shot during Christmas time but more importantly it's a metaphoric title and it really refers to the side of life that we don't want to reveal, the part of the story we don't want told,” he said.
Salzman moved to New York City over thirty years ago but has found himself more recently living between Cape Town and the Big Apple.
Video by Kelly-Jane Turner
“I elected to show this project publicly for the first time in South Africa I think in large part because I'd started coming back here and spending as much time as possible. I lived in New York City for thirty years but I never felt like an American,” he said.
Salzman is the 2018 International Photographer of the Year in the Deeper Perspective category of the International Photography Awards for a project entitled ' The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim', which addresses the Rwandan genocide.