Llano Estacado

My investigation of the Llano Estacado started after a freak dust storm in 1970. It was a night event that left an eighth of an inch of dust covering the entire interior of my car. There was no wind involved. Static electricity carried the dust through a sliver of a crack on the driver side window. I remember the night looked like a socked-in corner of a San Francisco street except for the color. The street lamps on University glowed like large warm bright brown balls in the night air. It was this site that convinced me I lived in a beautiful part of the country. Every family member at that time tried to convince me the High Plains were as marginal a place as any and why would I want to live in such conditions. They just didn’t look hard enough.

Photographs I made over the next five decades dealt with the overlooked areas and vistas that were considered banal by many. Much of the time it seems that images grab me and insist on being photographed. A blowing plastic bag caught in a fence makes me stop my car a half mile down the highway and return. I had to set up the tripod and make a photograph. I think it is a poetic photograph about this marginal land. While traveling a bit too fast down a two lane back road, a shadow in the shape of an X snagged my peripheral vision. A mile or two later I had to return. I liked the fact that it lay on the edge or gutter of the road. The lines in the blacktop, the shadow of the electric pole, and the horizon set up the page and the X is in the margin. So it goes in this unappreciated landscape.