Desert / Désert

For twenty years I’ve been photographing in two environments that seem diametrically opposed:  Desert and Water or, Wet and Dry. 

The waterscapes are from Lac Désert in Quebec.  Lac Désert is a waterscape punctuated by land:  coves, bayous, swamps, marshes, islands, and extensive reaches of open water . . . a botanical waterpark.

The desert landscapes are from the San Rafael Desert, Reef and Swell regions in southern Utah:  broad reaches of desert plain, mountains, reefs, buttes, mesas and box canyons; where existence is eked out of 7 inches of rainfall a year . . . a landscape punctuated by brief appearances of water.

As I’ve looked at these images over the years, I began to see that they all had elements in common.  I’m looking at distinctively different subject matter with the same set of eyes.  The question is, do they address the same aesthetic space?

The photographs deal with a variety of issues, all photographic.  Wide perspective/ telephoto perspective, maximum content/minimum content, front lighting/back lighting, infinite depth of field/limited depth of field, positive and negative space.  These are all concepts, the artistic underpinnings.  What the photographs are really about is the ephemeral quality of light and atmosphere, the changing nature of waterscape and landscape and the contemplative nature of vision.

Ted Wathen