Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Incident at Organ Pipe.

On our roadtrip through the American West, Bordeaux and I spent one night in Organ Pipe National Park. It's in a desolate corner of southern Arizona, almost to the border with Mexico. After looking around, we set up camp, and prepared dinner as the sun rapidly disappeared. Once the light had receded over the surrounding hills, darkness enveloped us, and the air quickly grew cold. During the day, every inch of Organ Pipe had felt alive. But in the total darkness of night, with just the sound of kangaroo rats scratching over the sand, we could truly feel our isolation.

I've always found deserts to be beautiful. Part of what makes them so intriguing, however, is that they have an aura of the forbidding. Their barren appearance suggests loneliness, the landscape of the abandoned and forsaken. At night, they only get more eerie. Surrounded by the towering shadows of saguaro, it seemed the proper theatre for some old-fashioned spiritualist photography. We created our own ghosts, the camera becoming the instrument for a desert séance.

1 comment:

JHill said...

Those pictures are so cool, and scared me a bit until I read the post!