Desert Artifacts

The printed work and statement for this project (partially revised above) were exhibited along with objects found in the desert at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts in 1994. The prints were made in two digital processes:  Archival Pigment prints by the Evercolor Corporation and IRIS inkjet prints by Nash Editions. Sizes vary from 20”x16” to 43”x35.”

In the early 1990s I started paying more attention to the ground.  I had been photographing the landscape for over a decade, when suddenly beneath my feet the detritus of human history seemed inseparable from the larger views along the horizon.  From bullets to beer cans, I had been ignoring the ground cover of my own era;  the objects that fail the transition from junk to artifact; the contents of our own layer in stratigraphic history.   Discarded, broken, shot, things already altered by the desert heat and sun, they were objects longer new enough to be considered of the moment, but not yet old enough to be cloaked with sentimentality.    

My collecting technique was simple: nothing older than I was (at the time almost 50 years); nothing faded beyond the span of recall; nothing which fails to generate the pathos of self-recognition.  Each object must lack intrinsic meaning until it is invested with attention.  And each must pick up the life of its users by defying the ignominy of being discarded. 

From tiny potsherds whole histories are created about cultures of the past.  What will be told about us by the things we have left?