Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park

For some reason, I am drawn to the desert. Perhaps it’s because the landscape is so different from where I grew up. Or maybe it’s the silence and simplicity. Or how certain plants seem to thrive in this rugged and parched place.

Recently, I had the chance to visit three desert national parks in one trip – Death Valley and Joshua Tree in California, and National Park and Saguaro National Park in Arizona. Before leaving, I revisited the work of photographer Linde Waidhofer through her beautiful book, Stone and Silence, which I purchased many years ago. It includes text by her partner, Lito Tejaco-Flores. Here are a few excerpts from the text, along with a few images from my visit to Death Valley National Park.

Badwater Basin, Salt Flats and Snow

“Linda is in love with desert light, with the clear, dry, thin air that invites a fifty-mile glance, a hundred-mile gaze, in love with simplicity and emptiness, with lines of sight that nothing less than a distant mountain range can block.”

“Horizons haunt us: hundred-mile horizons, distant horizons, 360-degree horizons, Sky’s edge, desert’s edge, earth’s edge. These far horizons shrink mountain ranges into ripples, wrinkles on a long, low line. Where the finite earth runs out and infinite sky begins.”

Sand Dune Patterns

“Photographing surprise, awe, mystery, emptiness is not the same thing as photographing a sunset.”

Do visit her website and read her wonderful essays on photography.

Have you been to the desert? How did it affect you?

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