Lightis andalwayshasbeen
thephotographer’sgreat-
estconcern.Butin the
mid-19thcentury,thetask
ofcapturingandcreat-
inglightwasall-consuming.
In 1864,AlfredBrothers,the
sonofanEnglishchemist,
beganto experimentwitha
primitiveflash—essentially,a
metal-burninglamp.
Thekeywasmagnesium,a
remarkablylightweightsilvery
metal.AtNo.12 on the peri-
odic table, toward the top left
corner, it’s one of the most
common elements on Earth,
yet it’s never found in its pureform.Onitsown,magnesium
burns slow and clear and gives
off a bright, neutral light—no
blue or yellow sheen.
Brothers took a chunk of
magnesium ore, bathed it in
acid, mixed it with salt, burned
it, and captured the vaporized
condensation. He hammered
this purified metal lump into a
sheet, then cut it into ribbons
that could be lit like candle
wicks. He placed this controlled
fire next to his enormous, boxy
camera and made a portrait in
his studio. “Henceforth it will
be next to impossible for mor-
tal man to hide himself from
the lens of the photographer.
Formerly we were safe aftersunset,butthatis nolonger,”
a London journalist wrote in the
Standard. Soon, adventurers
such as Charles Piazzi Smyth
were taking magnesium on the
road to shoot the first scenes
of caverns and the insides of
the Great Pyramid of Giza.
By the 1880s, the magne-
sium flash had leapt from the
toolbox of explorers to that of
journalists. As the story goes,
Jacob Riis, then a photographer
for New York’s Evening Sun,
read an article about a German
manufacturer of flash powder
and reacted “with an outcry
that startled my wife. ... A way
had been discovered, it
ran,totakepicturesby
flashlight.”Riisacquired
aflash gun—which ignites
magnesium powder inside
a pistol—and took it with
him to shoot the dark tene-
ments of New York’s Lower
East Side. Without magne-
sium, there would be no How
the Other Half Lives.
Therewouldalsobenoten-
ementpicturesfromJessie
TarboxBeals,a schoolteacher-
turned-photographerwhoshot
portraitsofearly20thcentury
New Yorkers. She was, as histo-
rian Kate Flint writes in Flash!,
a master of “the surprising illu-
mination of the everyday.” In
one especially notable Beals
portrait, an unnamed woman
sits on a kitchen chair, hold-
ing a naked infant in each arm,
wearing a flat, tired expres-
sion. She and her babies are
squeezed among mismatched
cribs, a worn apple basket, an
iron stove, pots, a kettle, and29PYRAMID:
SSPL/GETTY
IMAGES
“This is gorgeous,” Jacobsen says as he holds up a handful
of blindingly white flakes. I take a pinch. “Isn’t it delicious,
too?” he asks. It’s briny, but not bitter. Tangy, but not tart. I
bite down, and the salt makes a crunch, like a potato chip.
The day after our tour of the bay facility, Jacobsen invites me
into the warehouse section of the company’s 27,000-square-
foot headquarters in Portland, where the Netarts Bay flake
gets packed. Inside a glass-enclosed clean room, three pack-
ers shovel white flakes from bins into small plastic bags. Each
worker wears a long plastic poncho, a hair and face mask that
leaves only enough room for their noses and eyes, and tight
black gloves. Scales line their respective workstations. “All
of our salt is hand-packed,” Jacobsen says. “It looks a little
druggy, a little Walter White-esque, but whatever.”
Jacobsen owes some of his success to good timing.
According to Souza of America’s Test Kitchen, chefs and restau-
rants were already beginning to adopt carefully produced,
flaky sea salts as a way of making their dishes stand out. Then
cookbooks,cookingshows,andrecipesinmainstreampubli-
cationspushedthetrendtothegeneralpublic.“There’sbeena
tonmoreinthelast5 to 10 years from a publishing perspective
on salt and how to use it,” Souza says. “I think we’ve always
loved salt in this country, but Americans now think about salt
in a way they absolutely didn’t before.”
When it came out in 2011, Jacobsen’s salt was $5.50 for a
4-ounce bag. But once it developed a cult following in Portland,
with Güero’s Sanchez and Gabriel Rucker of Le Pigeon among
its champions, Jacobsen swiftly forged partnerships to spread it
across the U.S. Restaurants from Rustic Canyon in Los Angeles
to Jean-Georges in New York City now feature Jacobsen salts in
their dishes; you can also find them in every Williams-Sonoma
store, as well as at Whole Foods Markets, specialty shops, and
either of Jacobsen’s two facilities. The 4-ounce bag of flake salt
costs a bit more now: $12.50.
Dick Hanneman, who spent 24 years as president of the
SaltInstitute,a now-defunctglobalassociationofsaltcom-
panies,takesa skepticalviewofthetrend.“Thedevelop-
mentoftheAmericanproduction of sea salt is a fantastic
marketing achievement,” he says. “Somehow, sea salt, which
is the cheapest salt to make, has been sold to the public as
a superior salt.”
Jacobsen doesn’t disclose revenue figures, beyond saying
they’re small but significant enough that he’s been able to
start paying his family back. He’s hoping that his chief finan-
cial officer, Mary Ellen Signer, can help him keep expand-
ingthebusiness.InthedecadesheservedasCFOandchief
operatingofficerofStumptownCoffeeRoasters,Signersaw
thecompanygrowfrom$6millioninrevenueto$68million.
The pair have high hopes for their new seasoning line,
with varieties for steak, seafood, tacos, and ramen. Three of
them actually contain salt from Italy, though the steak sea-
soning makes use of Jacobsen’s sea salt. Broadening their
offerings makes sense, if only as a way to get people who’ll
shell out for steak seasonings to start noticing Jacobsen salts.
I takea pinchofthesteakseasoningandsprinkleit ontomy
tongue.It isindeedgood—apleasingmixofblackpepper,
garlic, and red pepper flakes—but before leaving headquar-
ters, I stop by the store for something else. What I really want
is a bag of the flake. <BW>Flashback
By E. Tammy Kim12Mg
MagnesiumPiazziSmyth:Inside theGreatPyramids◼ Magnesium $4.74 /kg U.S. spot