It is difficult for me to express in words what I see in those landscapes. I am certain that there are several interconnected layers in my seeing, to which I react emotionally. In its first expressive layer, (Be)Longing lets me show beauty and serenity of places that are rather forbidding to a man. I am curious about the magnetic attraction of a desert in which one step too far under the Delicate Arch is a step towards death. Why do the slot canyons of the Navajo land fascinate with their painterly, unique beauty, while standing in them in a heavier rain leads to a tragedy? The difficulty of living in many of the places that I have been recording is as sheer as our souls’ yearning to belong to them. The further I am from the arid Mojave the more I long for it. Circumstances caused those forces to remain separate. My photographs let me, and I hope the viewers, experience the exaltation of a moment when those feelings join each other in an image.
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