In Cyprus, aquifers face depletion and salinisation, with brackish water intrusion signalling over-extraction, climate stress and land use changes. Salt balances heritage decline, threatening water and culture, and its role as a preservative. Copper, derived from aes cyprium and formed from ancient seawater cycling through volcanic rocks, dissolves and deposits as copper sulphides when cooled. Salt in seawater enables copper transport, making brine both medium and catalyst for mineral wealth. These minerals influence photography’s history and the island’s heritage, linking mineral processes with intruding waters and cultural memory. 

The work uses analogue film processes that incorporate the site’s material conditions. By submerging film in brackish waters, allowing salt crystals to mark the image and reworking these through saltwater electro-etching in copper, Brackish Registers becomes both evidence and affective archive. Water and salt inscribe themselves onto the image of the island’s heritage, transforming the medium into a witness, developed through the very crisis it records.