Back To Loneliness

In the Mojave Desert sky, thunderclaps are rare, lightning strikes even less, and hard rain is an episodic event that creates gully-washing floods. On the ground, you find dry lake beds coated with salt dust, grand vistas of hard packed sands covered with creosote plantations, black lava domes and purple cinder cones that crunch under your feet. Sand dunes around the dry lake beds launch dust devils into the blue atmosphere, and the monster dunes at Kelso, where the fine sands of America’s Great Basin collects, sing a shrill falsetto as wind driven silica particles shift and shake. At higher altitudes, snow sometimes falls (then sublimates), and the world’s largest Joshua Tree Forests grow, their gnarly branches casting fuzzy shadows under a relentless sun. Rugged four-wheel drive trails provide access to played out mines, and abandoned homesteads wrought free of domestic dreams due to endless drought reminds us of the early explorer’s true grit as they trekked across an unforgiving desert to reach the cool breezes of the Pacific Ocean.

This is the Mojave National Preserve, 1.6 million acres of starkly different visual communities. Yet, there is a solitude and serenity, and a uniform quality of light, magical at times, uniting them into an uneasy syncopation. My wife Vincene identified these elements as the "Back to Loneliness" experience. Over time and in those fractional conversations that deeply committed couples enjoy, the phrase became a photographic project title and a commitment between us to capture the experience of returning to the solitude of yesterday and eons of yesterdays.

Sadly, Vincene fell to cancer early in the project. Sudden and swift it came but there was a requested last trip: an off road run into the Ivanpah Mountains, a final night in State Line. She only saw a few of the project images come alive in print, and how could either of us know how prophetic the title "Back to Loneliness" would become.

This project is for her, for you and times forward.

A note about the Back to Loneliness Collection. This "master" collection actually contains several distinct sub-collections: The Ivanpahs, Friction Smooth, and several other works in progress under the Mojave National Preserve Artist in Residence Program. Please take a moment to enjoy The Ivanpahs and Friction Smooth and enjoy each collection's distinct images.