Taking a concept most commonly applied to broken pottery, artist Rachel Sussman applies golden pigment to the cracks in paved urban surfaces in a series called ‘Sidewalk Kintsukuroi.’ In Japan, this tradition – also known as kintsugi – treats breakage and repair as a valuable part of an object’s history instead of something to disguise. The cracks are highlighted and in effect, celebrated, making the object more visually interesting.

It’s interesting to see this idea of embracing flaws extended to public surfaces. Instead of simply allowing them to be paved over, Sussman calls attention to them and makes them into works of art. In this sense, these cracks become part of the constant evolution of a city, remaining visible even after the functionality of these roads or sidewalks has been restored.

The resulting patterns are often quite stunning, their irregularities taking on abstract compositions of light and dark, matte and luminescent. In some cases, they almost look like marble.

Susan created the in-ground installations using tree sap-based resin and a combination of bronze and 23.5 carat gold dust. To reproduce the effect in a gallery environment, the artist hand-painted enamel and metallic dust onto photographs of the physical works. They’re currently on display as part of the Alchemy: Transformations in Gold show at the Des Moines Art Center.

To many people around the world, salt is just a substance that makes food taste better. But to the Japanese, it’s deeply symbolic, an indispensable part of death rituals that imparts purification of the body and soul. Artist Motoi Yamamoto draws upon the role of salt in his culture, using it as a art medium that he painstakingly packs into sculptures or squeezes into intricate drawings. The artist aims to confront viewers with the reality of death, in the form of stark white installations that mimic trailing vines, networks of neural nerves and endless paths of pure sand or snow. Here are 23 photos and 2 videos of 12 of Yamamoto’s most stunning salt artworks.

Floating Garden

Yamamoto began working with salt as an art medium after his sister’s death from brain cancer at 24 years old. Many of his works, including the ‘Floating Garden‘ series, resemble microscopic imagery of the brain.

Labyrinth Series

“Drawing a labyrinth with salt is like following a trace of my memory. Memories seem to change and vanish as time goes by. However, what I seek is the way in which I can touch a precious moment in my memories that cannot be attained through pictures or writings. I always silently follow the trace, that is controlled as well as uncontrolled from the start point after I have completed it.”

UTSUSEMI

The artist packed salt into a tall, narrow staircase for the work ‘Utsusemi’. Giving in to the natural processes of destruction and decay, Yamamoto allows the salt to crumble over time, often intentionally leaving the sculptures out in the rain so they can melt, changing with exposure to the elements until they dissipate altogether.

A Corridor to Remembrance

Yamamoto reveals his intention behind this large-scale work, ‘A Corridor of Remembrance.’ “With the art works entitled “a corridor of remembrance” or “land of meditation”, what Motoi Yamamoto represents could be described as an unknowable realm in which the notion of death unfolds. These site-specific works, consisting of a massive quantity of bricks made of salt, piled up in layers together with rusty iron slabs, overwhelm the viewers in size and volume. Concealed by the slabs, one is not able to see the interior and depth of the edifice but a narrow path emerges from between the slabs. The path, which is too narrow for adults to go in to, gives a sense of a potency that demands a distinct physical response, as it leads to total darkness. It gives an interstice in the flux of time and space of everydayness in the present day, and embodies a sense of unconceivable and yet our physical instinct can respond to it.”

Forest of Beyond

One of his most incredibly complex works, ‘Forest of Beyond’ was created for the one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011. Currently on display at the Hakone Open Air Museum, ‘Forest of Beyond’ resembles the roots of a tree.

Forest of the Skyscraper

An 11-foot-tall ‘skyscraper’ made of salt, ‘Forest of the Skyscraper’ is another work that was allowed to crumble, thus changing significantly between its initial creation and its removal from the gallery.

Forest of This World

Connecting the role of salt in Japanese culture to the art and meditative act of sand gardening, ‘Forest of This World‘ was installed at the Hakone Open-Air Museum in Kanagawa from July 2011 to March 2012.

Sakura

The petals of cherry blossoms are perfectly rendered in Yamamoto’s series ‘Sakura‘. Looking as if they just fell from a tree, the petals are layered in such a way that they look amazingly three-dimensional and realistic.

Room

Among Yamamoto’s earliest salt art works is ‘Room‘, an installation at 300days Gallery in Tokyo in September 2000. The pure whiteness of the salt applied to the far wall of the gallery blends into the rest of the room, making it look as if the space is beginning to fall apart.

Fountain of Remembrance

Cast boat forms float outward in a circle in ‘Fountain of Remembrance’, an outdoor installation at the Garden of the Sculptures in Veracruz, Mexico. The installation was captured both before and after a rain that dissolved much of the salt.

Unfulfilled

Bursting forth from the gallery wall, a large triangular slab of iron recalls the bow of a rusting ship breaking through sea ice topped with snow. “The void of an image in the darkness is a crack which induces the feeling of the unknowable beyond our everyday life. In that, one might be led to a sacred sphere through the path of salt.”

Wedge

‘Wedge’ was an installation at the Telecom Center in Tokyo that looked like a path of snow, starting at the front door and ascending up a staircase.

Photographs of Japan from the Meiji and Taisho Periods (1868-1926) have captivated viewers around the world since they were first circulated. One photographer in particular captured Japanese life so beautifully that his work has been seen by countless people all across the globe. Until very recently, though, his name was virtually unknown. Now we know that the prolific photographer’s name was T. Enami – or rather, that was his trade name. He was born Enami Nobukuni, and his work made a deep and far-reaching impact on photography.

Some of T. Enami’s most popular and memorable works were his stereograms: two nearly-identical 2D images taken from slightly different angles that, when viewed together through a stereograph, appear three-dimensional. Here they are animated to give the 3D effect, but all of the originals can be seen on Okinawa Soba’s Flickr collection.

Enami started his career as a traditional photographer, but later embraced the more “modern” stereoviews and lantern slides. Judging from his carefully staged stereograms, he approached his work with a great deal of attention to detail. The colors on these stereograms were all hand-painted, and the resulting product was sold around the world. Today, collectors treasure these exquisitely detailed antique images.

T. Enami ran a photography studio in Yokohama until his death in 1926. His work spanned a multitude of areas, including postcards, large-format prints, private portraits, glass transparencies, photo processing and print-making, and numerous commercial photography projects. His photographs have appeared several times in the pages of National Geographic, a true honor for any photographer. One of his half-stereoview images was even used on the cover of their 100th-anniversary book Odyssey: The Art of Photography at National Geographic.

Despite his monumental contributions to early Japanese photography, T. Enami’s identity was not widely known outside of Japan until around 2006, when his descendants shared information about him with biographers and collectors. He was the only photographer of his era known to work in all contemporary commercial and artistic formats, and it can be said that his work has been seen by more people than that of the more established “masters” of his time.

The appropriate credit is now being given to thousands of Enami photographs that were previously unattributed or simply attributed to the wrong photographer. Enami is now, finally, in his rightful place amongst the most influential early Japanese photographers. A detailed biography of T. Enami can be found at T-Enami.org, and even more of his animated stereograms can be found at Pink Tentacle.