Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park
For some reason, I am drawn to the desert. Perhaps it’s because the landscape is so different from where I grew up. Or maybe it’s the silence and simplicity. Or how certain plants seem to thrive in this rugged and parched place.
Recently, I had the chance to visit three desert national parks in one trip – Death Valley and Joshua Tree in California, and National Park and Saguaro National Park in Arizona. Before leaving, I revisited the work of photographer Linde Waidhofer through her beautiful book, Stone and Silence, which I purchased many years ago. It includes text by her partner, Lito Tejaco-Flores. Here are a few excerpts from the text, along with a few images from my visit to Death Valley National Park.
Badwater Basin, Salt Flats and Snow
“Linda is in love with desert light, with the clear, dry, thin air that invites a fifty-mile glance, a hundred-mile gaze, in love with simplicity and emptiness, with lines of sight that nothing less than a distant mountain range can block.”
“Horizons haunt us: hundred-mile horizons, distant horizons, 360-degree horizons, Sky’s edge, desert’s edge, earth’s edge. These far horizons shrink mountain ranges into ripples, wrinkles on a long, low line. Where the finite earth runs out and infinite sky begins.”
Sand Dune Patterns
“Photographing surprise, awe, mystery, emptiness is not the same thing as photographing a sunset.”
Do visit her website and read her wonderful essays on photography.
I grew up in the desert. It instilled in me a love for big skies and wide open spaces, a love of rocks, an appreciation for things that grow and survive in harsh conditions, and an eye for the details to be found in nature. It also gave me a craving for water and green, growing things. I still appreciate the beauty of the desert, but have no desire to ever live there again. Today I live near the coast of Maine, at the edge of a river and a ten-minute drive from the beach, where I find my big sky, open space, sand, rocks, and all the water I could ask for.
I love these photos, Kim, especially the first one. The human figures look so tiny and vulnerable. Your images convey a sense of the vastness of scale and the stark reality of the desert, but you’ve captured its intrigue, too.