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upon layer
Back when I thought I was going to be a poet, I submitted some poems for a critique. One of the poems was titled “Deserts Always Win” – I’d written it after a drive through the deserts around Victorville, California, where I saw lots and lots of remnants of things that hadn’t worked out – homes, businesses, dreams. And – unlike places with heavy vegetation – plants didn’t grown up over the left-overs, so the defeat was always in clear view of anyone who bothered to look. Apparently, the person who critiqued my work had not ever been to a desert; they took very strong exception to my title and to the premise of the poem.
I’m not saying that unfavorable critique led directly to my becoming a photography. I am also not saying that it didn’t play a part…
Anyway, here’s a hulking ruin in eastern New Mexico; it appears to my photographic eye that once again, the desert was victorious. (Poetic me still stands by that, too.)
Chaves County, New Mexico
photographed 5.23.2021
maybe you and I will not agree
Did this guy break my composition by walking into it? Or should I pretend I planned it that way? Was it wrong to line up the pedestrian across the street with the mannequin? Should more stuff be in focus? Should it have been processed in black and white?
San Francisco, California
photographed 4.13.2019
that welcome seems a bit worn out
Well, sure, the sign DOES say “welcome.” But there isn’t really anything else around to support that, is there?
Irony, I guess.
Roswell, New Mexico
photographed 5.22.2021
no one every really leaves
The road wasn’t paved all the way to this remote, windswept place. That was, of course, part of the charm. And part of the adventure of the day.
Quay County, New Mexico
photographed 6.5.2021
shadows reveal what was there all along
From my angle, those horseshoes blended in with the bare cemetery dirt, leaving the late-afternoon sun to reveal to me what was in fact there all along.
Quay County, New Mexico
photographed 6.4.2021
One Day | One Image 