California Landscapes 2 (2021)

Twenty years ago, in 2004, I moved from the East Coast to California. I was not a landscape photographer then and I am not a landscape photographer now but as I was building a stone berm at the front of our property I saw a photograph in the fieldstone in my hand. And so I photographed the stones, in black and white with a black background, looking like disembodied worlds floating in the void.

When a set of these images was exhibited at ArtCenter in Pasadena we made them very large, with five prints filling one large wall. To emphasize the otherworldly nature of the landscapes, the curator obtained on loan a set of tiny rocks from the Huntington Library which had been brought back from the Moon, placing these alien artifacts in small acrylic cases in front of each of my images.

Seventeen years later, no longer new to California, I rephotographed these same rocks. As before, the lighting comes from a small, moving flashlight providing the unnatural glow. But now the rocks are in color, the fieldstones sitting on an old, weather table, no longer so alien.