Size: 7.5” x 7.5” on 8.5” x 11” JonCone Studio Type 5 Paper

Signed & stamped in verso

I don’t know when it was I became a watcher of things. The act of observation and quiet reflection is at the very center of being a landscape photographer. It informs creative decisions. Into the stillness of wide open spaces I stare.

Standing on the shore of Mono Lake I watch a slow death happening. An ancient lake, one of the oldest in North America is being squeezed, like most of the water in the west, for use elsewhere, for other people. Death by the need to sustain desert cities. Those are political issues, felt here but dealt with elsewhere. Here it is the birds and tufas born of calcium and carbonate that force a reckoning. Standing here I must reckon with the greed of others, most of whom have never seen this place although it is in their home state. Like eating meat from a farm you’ve never visited. That indifference puts this place in peril. That apathy is the death knell to places like this. But If you stand here and listen to the migratory birds, and sink your feet in the thick mud, and allow yourself to soak in the profound beauty found in such stark contrasts then perhaps there is hope that this will be here for the next generation and the generation after that. Don’t be apathetic.

Location: Mono Lake, Eastern Sierra

Technical Info: Hasselblad, Kodak T-Max 100 BW Film Zeiss 50mm, Deep Red #25, 3-stop NP, developed in Kodak X-tol 1:1.