I never had a “project.” I would go out and shoot, follow my eyes… I tried to capture with my camera, for others to see.
Helen Levitt
Category: thoughts
speaks for itself
You know, if you spend enough time roaming our public lands you somehow learn to spot the signs of where people have camped.
words from baltz
I was living in Monterey, a place where the classic photographers – the Westons, Wynn Bullock and Ansel Adams – came for a privileged view of nature. But my daily life very rarely took me to Point Lobos or Yosemite; it took me to shopping centers, and gas stations and all the other unhealthy growth that flourished beside the highway. It was a landscape that no one else had much interest in looking at. Other than me.
Lewis Baltz
chuparosa and deadwood in space
Space. It’s one of the dominant features of this desert. Along with the sun. Sun and space.
How to convey the immensity of the space and the intensity of the sun in a picture and still have a coherent photo? One that bites, that gives a sense of the stark, harsh, bare-bones unforgiving power of the desert? I’m working on it…
powerful words
If you haven’t gone too far you haven’t gone far enough.
I can’t for the life of me remember who said this, but they are powerful words.
anything goes
To me, photography is too deep and wide a medium to confine myself to a single method or approach. So – I take back everything I’ve ever said about how and why I take pictures, and will continue in the spirit of ‘I’ll try anything’. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t that’s fine too, but then I’ll know.
old water tank
Back in 1933 this small settlement, now known as Chiriaco Summit, opened. It opened the same day as, and alongside, a new highway, US 60, that established a new route across the desert from Indio, California to Arizona. This place was known then as Shaver Summit. It was renamed years later after the Chiriaco family who started it and still runs it 90 years later.
Water was scarce. The owner and his son laid roughly two miles of pipe from the springs up in the canyon behind the settlement. This was a few years before it was designated as Joshua Tree National Monument and is now Joshua Tree National Park. This photo is the original tank they piped water to.
desert topographics 