Somewhere between
the ruins and the unexplained.
A growing index of obsessions.
Open a subject. Follow a thread.
5 subjects
A doorway with no door. A foundation with no house. The buildings around Ludlow are the starting point for a collection about what survives when a place changes around it.
On the collecting list: photographs, old maps, building histories, and observations from the ground. Field essay in progress.
Industry leaves a different kind of ruin. EPA records describe Goldome as a defunct ore-processing mill occupying roughly 40 acres within Mojave National Preserve. Its 2008 assessment and removal records are one place to begin untangling what happened here.
Research thread / photographs and field essay to follow.
Desert trains, forgotten stops, railroad towns, and the robbery stories that gather around a line through empty country. A place for the machinery, the history, and the long wait between trains.
On the collecting list: historic timetables, newspaper accounts, railroad traces, and photographs. Individual robbery accounts will be tied to sources.
Fossils, crystals, volcanic rock, and the little pieces of a landscape that make you stop walking. The beginning of a specimen journal: what caught the eye, where it belongs geologically, and what still needs identifying.
Field collection / specimen photographs and identifications in progress.
The Mojave Incident, lost-treasure tales, strange encounters, and the stories that change the way a dark valley feels. This is the shelf for folklore and reported experiences, with room to ask where a story came from.
Reading list / accounts and folklore will be labeled separately from documented history. The Mojave Incident is a reported encounter, not an established historical finding.
Some images stay with you. A face on an old photographic plate. A building with the windows gone. A landscape that seems to go on forever.
This Curtis print belongs here as a historical photograph of Diné ceremonial life—and as one of the images behind this collection’s visual language.
View the original plate ↗I’m Brent. Most days off, I’m somewhere in the desert with Willow, following a dirt road, looking at rocks, or trying to figure out what used to be there.
Desert Dirt Pilgrim is where those obsessions live: the places, the finds, the history, and the weird shit that makes me keep looking.
The collection is just beginning. More photographs, field notes, and stories will find their way here.
