(…) Jacqueline Salmon’s series of photographs, whose title, Vegetable Roots, is borrowed from the Chinese philosopher Hong Zicheng, displays vegetables as we seldom see them, in other words integrally. The familiar plants in these photographs are returned to the unknown in stagings that take away none of their elements. In the garden, in the ground, vegetables, whatever they may be, dissimulate their roots, but they end up on the greengrocer’s stall in truncated form, whether the leading role be played by the root (as with turnips or carrots, for example), the fruit (as with marrows) or the leaves. Here, suddenly(…), they are themselves, having evaded any commercial, gastronomic or (even) aesthetic instrumentalisation. (…)

Jean-Christophe Bailly