--- title: See What Happens to a Dress That’s Submerged in the Dead Sea description: Israeli artist Sigalit Landau submerged this dress in the Dead Sea for two months — and ended up with an eerie, salt-crusted work of art. canonical: https://time.com/4468419/transformation-dress-dead-sea-salt/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-26T16:40:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:35:54.967Z og:title: See What Happens to a Dress That’s Submerged in the Dead Sea og:description: An artist suspended a dress in the salty lake for months to turn it into art. og:url: https://time.com/4468419/transformation-dress-dead-sea-salt/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: See What Happens to a Dress That’s Submerged in the Dead Sea twitter:description: An artist suspended a dress in the salty lake for months to turn it into art. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # See the Eerie Transformation of a Dress That’s Been Submerged in the Dead Sea for Months  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Aug 26, 2016 4:40 PM UTC  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Aug 26, 2016 4:40 PM UTC The [Dead Sea](http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2084182,00.html?iid=sr-link6), known for its mud and salty waters, has transformative properties. That’s the message from an art project by artist [Sigalit Landau](http://www.sigalitlandau.com/), who submerged a traditional 1920s-style [Hasidic](http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/05/09/hasidic-jewish-newspaper-photoshops-hillary-clinton-from-situation-room-photo/?iid=sr-link2) black dress into Israel’s hyper-saline lake in 2014 and kept it suspended in place using a synthetic net. As she took photos of the dress over the course of two months, the old-fashioned garment slowly became encrusted in salt crystals — until the entire dress was fully encased in a thick, salty, sparkling coating. “…It looks like snow, like sugar, like death’s embrace; solid tears, like a white surrender to fire and water combined,” Landau explained to [London’s Marlborough Contemporary](https://www.instagram.com/p/BIZv-1th4i7/?taken-by=marlborough%5Fcontemporaryhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BIZv-1th4i7/?taken-by=marlborough%5Fcontemporary), where the photographic exhibition — entitled “Salt Bride” — is on display through September 3\. People [around the world](https://twitter.com/search?q=Sigalit%20Landau&src=tyah) are mesmerized by the surreal transformation of black to white, fluid fabric to solid salt. Here’s the dress in its early stages of crystallization, suspended eerily in the murky emerald waters: And here’s the final, fully-transformed dress being lifted out of the water: ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4468419/transformation-dress-dead-sea-salt/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4468419/transformation-dress-dead-sea-salt/"},"headline":"See the Eerie Transformation of a Dress That’s Been Submerged in the Dead Sea for Months","datePublished":"2016-08-26T16:40:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:35:54.967Z","description":"It's worth its weight in salt","url":"https://time.com/4468419/transformation-dress-dead-sea-salt/","keywords":["Newsfeed","viral","fashion","Art"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Raisa Bruner","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4468419/transformation-dress-dead-sea-salt/","name":"See the Eerie Transformation of a Dress That’s Been Submerged in the Dead Sea for Months"}}]}] ```