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.
Category: thoughts
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.
words from wessel
I don’t go out looking for pictures. I go out, and if something catches my eye, that’s reason enough to photograph it.
Henry Wessel Jr.
cholla
Sometimes I ask myself, “hey kid, don’t you think you shoot too many chollas?” Sometimes I answer myself, “yeah, probably.” But then again I can’t help but wonder – is that really even possible?
words from saul leiter
I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learned to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.
Saul Leiter
words from wessel
Most musicians I know don’t just play music on Saturday night. They play music every day. They are always fiddling around, letting the notes lead them from one place to another. Taking still photographs is like that. It is a generative process. It pulls you along.
Henry Wessel Jr.
words from eggleston
You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too.
William Eggleston
desert topographics 