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The Desert

Dead Cars In The Desert

Snaphots of the California, Nevada, and Utah deserts: Death Valley, the Mojave, Owens Valley, the Great Basin, and beyond, as taken on anything from an old 4×5 view camera to an iPhone.

Most of the photos here focus more on the human side of the desert than on the natural landscape; as I wrote over on my Desert Videos page,

[This] obviously reflect[s] the strong ambivalence I feel about the way humans have settled the desert and left so much wreckage and junk lying around (there’s a reason someone once jokingly summed up my photography as “dead cars in the desert”), but I try not to beat people over the head with it. My views are a lot less black-and-white than most people assume (enough so that I get flak from all sides) — there’s definitely real beauty and attitudes to admire in the strange juxtapositions of humans and deserts, and I hope some of that comes through here every now and then. If you’ve ever watched the wonderful documentary “Darwin” about the small Californian High Desert town of Darwin (a place I’ve been to a bunch of times, just passing through), you might recognize the phenomenon…

My gallery “Route 66 — A Few Miles, A Couple of Decades” goes over some of the same ground by focusing on the parts of old Route 66 that go through the Mojave Desert. And for some of my other views of the deserts, take a look at my Desert Videos gallery on Hamish Reid Videos.

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