It Was a Different Lifetime

Hints, echos, and shadows: From the looks of this abandoned horse trailer in this abandoned date farm in the Californika desert, there may have been an idylic aura at one point or another. But no longer…

Or maybe it is all just my own fantasy.

You can have an original high resolution print of this for yourself. Just send me a donation and your address and it will be yours.

Some Days are just Harder than Others…

I’d love to send this out to you as an original, hand-signed, numbered postcard. What say? In fact, what I think would be a lot of fun is to start a subscription thing going where every month I would send out a new limited edition postcard print to people. Any responses to this idea?

Anti-Seasonal Affective Disorder

One day without sunshine is fine. Beyond that I start getting… well, it’s not pretty. Looking at a photograph like this will help a bit. But not much. Damn but this is a pretty day, isn’t it?

High Desert Runoff

Red rock, liquified. Roaring down washes, dragging along anything in it’s path. Monsoon rains scour the high desert rock and keep it clean and shiny. Basins capture a few bits here and there for the animals to find and rehydrate with. Northern Arizona, in the summer.

Datura

In the morning. Datura. Before the sun, which causes it to fold up and retreat into it’s own inner thoughts and processes. This weed grows in the most unattractive of locations and rewards those who visit there with such beauty it is hard to reconcile. This one was in a trash heap of road construction rubble south of the town of Winslow, Arizona, during the monsoon season of 2007. I think a rainbow ended here, as well.

Get Your Kicks!

Sitting cockeyed in a motel parking lot on famed Route 66 in Flagstaff, this 50s Buick is a bit forlorn. It appears to have been more loved in recent days evidenced by the now peeling clear coat, but at this point it’s lookin’ kind sad and neglected.

This is Your Mind (?)

Come on in, the miasma’s fine.

Tash

The Tohono O’Odham nation in southern Arizona and northern Mexico has an annual celebration in Casa Grande. They call it a “Tash,” which means “whoopie!” I love it. This is the costume of one of the young women dancers.

Neon Boots & Saddle

Old neon is becoming a collector’s item when it isn’t trash. I suppose that the two go hand in hand, rarity creating value. A friend of mine in Tucson is collecting and restoring these wonderful old signs and working with others to try and save them from the landfill. This one’s in Casa Grande, Arizona.

It looks like the border of the arrow was originally a strip of individual bulbs which may have had a chaser effect, leading one into the motel. The old switches and transformers and parts are getting really hard to come by from what I understand. A fun hobby.

The Collapse of Countrywide Financial

As the fiction of the value of the dollar unwinds, the desert is strewn with detritus big and small.

Two days after I shot this discarded piece of a concrete mixer, scavengers were cutting it up, by hand, with hammers and crowbars, and hauling it off in old pickup trucks for it’s scrap value.  All’s relative, and nature abhors a vacuum.   It will be back on the shelves at Wal-Mart in another year for you to purchase in another form.