I have been concerned about our public wildlands since high school. In my formative years, I explored the Siskiyou, Flathead, Lolo, Glacier, Big Horn, and many other spaces with a small camera, and often wondered how I fit in within these National Forests and Parks— if I fit at all. In some cases, they sometimes hired me, working on a lonely lookout tower for a summer, manning a fire line on a hotshot crew, or cutting trail across the middle fork of the Flathead River in Montana. At other times, I simply hiked and camped, aimlessly wandering, and appreciating the natural, while gradually discerning what is self, and what is not. Oh, I lost my way at times, turning my lens on things of war, news, or of commercial needs, chasing dreams of ego and or financial rewards. But, like a rubber band stretched, the open and unscarred spaces of our public lands have always snapped me back to place, time, and reality.
For the last several years, I have been exploring and making images from the Mojave Desert. On any evening, I can look up from the dust of Soda Lake to the distant mountains called New York, Providence, or Castle. It’s then that the last of the sun anoints the tips of the Joshua Trees and I seem to see over the horizon to a time past when the seen was the agent of change, not the seer. In this place called the Mojave National Preserve, I recognize that I am not in a National Park of grand gesture such as Yellowstone or Yosemite, but in a land that is retreating to times past. Since becoming a protected Preserve in 1994, the previous mining, cattle grazing and other activities of man have ceased in favor of the National Park Service’s mission of preservation and restoration. My wife dubbed this restorative process, “Back to Loneliness”, a term that aptly describes the quiet serenity of the vast Mojave Desert.
Frictionsmooth is the second in the Back to Loneliness Fine Art Photography series, a project that I began in 2000 with my late wife Vincene, and now continue under the Mojave National Preserve’s Artist in Residence Program. Our first collection, The Ivanpahs, explored the Ivanpah mining region. In Frictionsmooth, I explore Soda Lake and the Cinder Cones National Natural Landmark, two geologic opposites that are within 15 miles of each other.
Soda Lake is the quintessential dry lakebed of the American West. It has flooded in modern times, and it supports surface moisture during winter rains. But, it’s the texture of the lakebed that inspires me, not the hydrology. Looking south to north one sees a vanishing horizon line that disappears into sunburned twilights. An hour after sundown the sky flushes orange with faded sunlight. The hard pack clay reflects this light and the fissured surface begins to glow, the color a luminous magenta. Skies swell off the distant horizon line, sometimes calm, sometimes full of thunderous clouds that tease us with the idea that rain may come (and on occasion, actually does).
The Cinder Cones National Natural Landmark is a volcanic landscape with dozens of vents, lava flows, and more than 30 cinder cones, as well layers of volcanic rock (basalt) up to 400 feet thick. While the geology and history of the violent lava activity is fascinating, I found myself drawn to the mass of heaving domes, some round, some thumb shaped while others have pointy peaks that resemble chessboard pieces. Orographic lifting forces low cloud decks into threatening thunderheads that remind us of the steam and energy that once arose from these active volcanoes.
Hike to the top of any dome and you will experience the Mojave stillness. Head chatter disappears and as a photographer I found myself working the magical light and then discovering what perception must have been before there was so much of it.
Though the ‘cones’ and “Soda Lake’ are distinctly different in landform they are similar in emotional and visual tone. Violent magma friction formed one land mass while episodic floods, Mariah winds and endless drought smoothed the other. I captured these images digitally and, in postproduction, I generated images that are a Vision beyond Documentation. This process allows me to highlight a fervent and primal vision of saturated blues and reds with a crystalline luminosity that is unique to the Mojave experience. I believe the resulting images portray the grit, the colorless, the colorful, and the miracle of a pastel sunset as it smoothes the deep shadows between cones and desert washes.
More importantly, I create images this way so that viewers can see the consequence of conscious choices as well feel those things that the images impart with all the power and intolerance of truth received, not earned. And, while I’m an unabashed advocate of desert and wildlands conservation, I do not see my work as polemical. I want viewers of my art to feel what I feel and then add their own values to the image. Hopefully, a commitment for the conservation and preservation of public lands will follow as.
None of this work would have happened if it were not for the extraordinary efforts of the men and women of the National Park Service. I especially thank Linda Slater, Chief, Resource Interpretation & Outreach for Mojave National Preserve. Her input and support for this effort and for the Artist in Residence Program are as important to me as the camera itself.
And thanks to Vincene, who inspired and believed so deeply in this work and the Preserve yet fell to cancer early in the project. Sadly, she only saw a few of the images come alive in print. How could either of us have known then how prophetic the title ‘Back to Loneliness’ would become.
Frictionsmooth is for her, for you, and for all of us who want to preserve the Mojave’s past for time forward.
