Memory Lane: Martin Salter

‘To spend time with Martin Salter’s Memory Lane is to enter into a kind of meditation. It is a narrative of strangeness, of chance encounters, mysterious occurrences against the flimsy solid background of ‘ordinary’ Britain. His photographs pose the question about ‘who we are’ and ‘where we are’, how we dwell within our urban, rural and coastal landscapes, the patterns of existence we make. Documentary photography magicks our recollections alive in a kind of visual alchemy. ‘Were we there?’ we wonder, ‘in that place at that time?’ In our memories, places shrink or grow larger, become indistinct or pencil more beautiful or more mundane; we are Alices in Wonderland as we confront the changing dimensions of the past.’ — Val Williams