The vastness and apparent emptiness of the central Great Basin in the western U.S. is hard to convey in words. Comprising 200,000 square miles of high desert that includes most of Nevada, a large swath of western Utah, and small sections of four other states, this area features rugged stretches of peaks alternating with ancient lakebeds. Within these boundaries are places that most people would not see as a destination. At most they might serve as a blurred and barren backdrop for travelers’ daydreams as they fly across on Interstate 80.
If those travelers step out of their cars, and walk for a while away from the roar of passing tractor-trailers, they will realize that this place is not at all empty, but it most certainly is vast. Desolate. Arid. Frigid in the winter and scorching in the summer.
From a distance, and especially at night, the place called Wendover looks as if it had been dropped into this landscape from above, rather than built up out of it. It is an improbable place, bursting with contradictions. The marks of deep geologic time visible to every horizon, the infinite desert sky, and the no-time, no-sky that exists inside the windowless casinos. The lives that pass through here, and the lives that pass here.
The contradictions and collisions of meaning and history are part of what draws me to this place. The neon enticements and the trailer parks. The “Fun Bus” carrying gamblers from Salt Lake City and the massive potash facility. The roar of the Union Pacific passing through town and the weathered remnants of the WWII-era Army Air Field (at one time the largest air base in the world, and with a dark history of its own).
Our human lives are, of course, always built and lived in relationship to the natural world, but rarely is the contrast so stark. Here, a neat, prosaic row of fenced front lawns ends suddenly in a barren foothill wash. A manicured golf course is a peninsula of lush green in an ocean of sand and dust. All of it once a lakebed, not too many thousands of years ago.
I see unsettled beauty here, along with the strangeness and the suffering. All of it wrapped in dust, blown by the shifting, keening desert wind. All of it wrapped in dust and an endless sweep of horizon.
These photographs were made between 2016 and 2022. The first item in the gallery is the cover layout for a book I created with these images. The full project description and notes about each photo are at the end of the gallery.
