Structures & Stirrings

In this part of the Mojave desert, abandoned shacks are a feature of the landscape. There are no less than eight of them on the acres immediately surrounding the property we’re on, and I find the one that’s closest to us to be the most interesting.

The shack next door. Wonder Lake, Twentynine Palms, CA

It was built in the middle of a wash, which I suppose would be fine most of the time – there is no rain most of the time, but when rain does come, the washes fill up like rivers and — you’ll never guess — they WASH things away!

The concrete foundation of this shack in the wash has a giant fracture down the center of it, and half of the floor is about 1’ lower than the other half from a time when water pulled at it. I can’t imagine the force it would take to do that, but that’s another blog post.

Cracked foundation of the shack next door. You can see our RV and the cottage we’re staying in while here in the background.

I’ve always had a thing for abandoned places. Exploring them excites me and for a reason I’ve yet to fully understand, they serve as a creative catalyst for me. My first photography series were taken in abandoned cotton mills around my hometown. I would lose myself in those spaces for hours, exploring and snapping photos. I never got tired of it.

I mention all this because it’s been a long time since I felt that kind of impulse or had any true creative outlet and the lack of it has taken its toll on me. The last 3 or 4 years have been particularly rough for me, but that’s definitely another blog post.

When we decided to spend the winter here in the desert, what I really hoped and set an intention for was to be stirred up by the landscape here – for all the stagnant energy that had built up within me to be shaken loose and washed away like an ill-positioned shack in the Mojave.

A room with a view.

The other day, feeling sufficiently stirred, I woke up early and with my camera and tripod in hand, walked over in the freezing cold dawn. The structure seemed to me to be a representation of the purgatory I had created for myself over these last few years. It felt like an appropriate place to express the frustration, exhaustion and emptiness I’d felt, along with the conflicting emotions of wanting to be seen and heard, but ultimately retreating further into isolation and despair after feeling unable to find my voice or place in the world.

I got out there and knocked the tripod over before I even began, cracking my UV filter and denting it into the side of the lens. My camera remote software kept glitching and my eyes were watering so bad from the cold I could barely see what I was doing. My nerves were frayed and I was damn near frozen by the time I finished, but I think I got the shots I was aiming for:

I haven’t done a lot of self-portraiture work and this series is very different from the ones I’ve made before. but it felt good to express myself in this way. I think I’ll do it more often.