This project grows out of a desire to more consciously inhabit, explore and photograph the desert terrain that I have long been drawn to. Looking for a way into this landscape, I came upon the idea of creating extended portraits of desert plants. By returning again and again to photograph these individuals, I hope to bear witness to their roots in both place and time.

On the desert, the lack of moisture determines both the characteristic spacing of the flora as well as the remarkable forms the plants themselves take. Both of these adaptations encourage us to connect with desert plants as individuals, as anyone who has walked among saguaros can attest. I sometimes include myself in these pictures as a way of contrasting my own restless self-awareness with the plant’s profound silence, its perfect commitment to place.

My shelves are filled with books about the desert. Between these many lines I look for insight into my own fascination with this hot ground. What I know is that the frankness of the land, the promise of solitude and the clarity of the air somehow constitute a tonic that I’ve attempted to celebrate in my photographs. Being a resident of the area affords kinship with these plants, rewarding the time spent peering through a lens or the effort involved in learning how they function as part of a larger whole.

In making this work, I have drawn on landscape tradition, botanical illustration and scientific investigation. I have made hundreds of visits to these plants over the last eight years. To date, I have photographed over 80 individual desert plants, some of which I have visited over 20 times.  This effort takes me to remote desert areas of Arizona, Sonora and California, answer to some sort of longing, yes, but also with the hope of nurturing a stronger connection to the desert country that I, and many others, have come to regard as home