decisions, decisions
version 1:
version 2:
Look at these two pictures. They are two of about 25 that I took of this weird target-thing(?) out in the Utah salt flats (on an airfoce bombing range, actually) and I am having an impossible time figuring out which one I like more. Honestly, I find both of them flawed, and if I were still in Utah I’d head out for at least one more go-around.
The lighting in each is quite different. The top image was taken shortly after noon, but the bottom picture was taken about 60 minutes before sunset. I like how the bright sun really draws out the bleakness in the top image, and the backlit sign looks particularly menacing. Where as the bottom image has more depth, and while not as menacing, I do like seeing more of the texture and color of the target. I am also really excited about the swath of light on the far horizon- it creates and almost unreal looking perspective.
The cropping of the shot is also quite different. Although pretty much from the same angle, the camera was probably about four inches higher in the top image than it was for the bottom image, and this created some vastly different outcomes. I like how the higher angle in the top image shows off more detail in the ground, but I also like how the square of the target intersects with the horizon. The top image is ground-heavy, while the bottom image is sky-heavy, and I am just not sure which one is working better.
And then of course there are just the natural elements that I cannot control, like the clouds and how they are interacting with the sun/light. Ultimately, that is the biggest thing, and is why I’ll often spend hours/days/weeks/months trying to get a shot (i am usually shooting 16mm film as well). I like the clouds in the top image more then the lower image, but as I mentioned before, that distant patch of sunlight on the horizon is pretty great too. Light is so amazing and weird; I will hang out waiting for the light to get a shot, but often find that the sun+clouds don’t do what I thought/hoped they would. I feel like I am getting better at recognizing cloud formations and predicting how they will affect the light, but it is always a guessing game.
If I could go back and re-shoot this shot, I think I’d try shooting it in the morning, or maybe around 11am, so the target and the cracks in the ground were a little more back-lit, but that might make for tricky exposures because the sun would be closer to being in the frame. I also think I’d inch in a little closer, and mimic the cropping in the top photograph, but lower the camera an inch or two so I could get some of that intersecting with the horizon line thing going. I’d also like to see this on a day when there are no clouds in the sky at all.
(i'd love to hear opinions on the two picts- if you have a favorite please let me know!)
targets
wendover report no. 11
The Lincoln School in Metropolis, Nevada, opened in 1914 and closed in 1947 and is pretty much all that is left of the town. Metropolis was a planned ranching and farming community founded in 1909 that reached an estimated population of 20,000 people, but water shortages and bad luck had it's way with the town and by the 1950s it was all but abandoned. Below is the road to Metropolis, the town of Wells is about twenty miles away. These pictures were taken at 5:45 am on May 17, 2007.
wendover report no. 10
Walking the streets of Wendover on the Utah side, one might think that the town was recently hit by some form of natural disaster. Junked cars, boarded up houses and abandoned mobile homes are decaying away in abundance. Vacant lots and abandoned trailers are filled with trash, the shells of burnt out homes sit waiting to be bull-dozed, and "closed to occupancy by order of county health dept" signs nearly rival in number the amount of homes that actually look to be kept up and lived in. It is an economically depressed community, to say the least.
I have always been amazed at the ability of trash to attract more trash. It's like if someone dumps an old refrigerator on the side of the road, someone else comes along and decides that that means it's okay for them to dump their old dishwasher. If a house is abandoned and the yard is filled with debris, then somehow it becomes okay to start using that yard as a place to dump trash. When I was living in New York last summer I remember stumbling upon a rusty heap of an old Ford cargo van that had been dumped in the nieghborhood where I was staying. I assumed that it would be towed away, but a couple days later the van was still sitting there, but now it was full and over-flowing with boxes and boxes of brochures for the local water-taxi service (a business which just happened to be down the street). A couple days later I walked by again, this time to find that not only were the van and the thousands of brochures still there, but several empty paint cans and bags of trash. The van was now just a centerpiece of what was becoming an island of garbage. As I walked away I noticed a man wheel an old dish-washer up to the pile and add it to the collection, and I realized that the abandonment of this van had somehow granted permission to the entire neighborhood to dump their refuse there too. It was like if the new trash you were dumping came into contact with the van, or at least touched some trash that was touching the van, than somehow it was okay.
This tradition of accumulating trash left in or around abandoned things is strong in Wendover, and it is clear that the town is in tough economic times. This is in harsh contrast to the Nevada side of Wendover that's just over the hill, a recent boomtown that is swelling with casino resorts and new suburban growth. The state line runs right through the middle of town, and within inches of this border start the glimmering monstrosities of corporate casino world. West Wendover (or the Nevada side of Wendover, depending who you ask) is awash with new development and large scale investment from giant corporate casinos, particularly the Peppermill, who are seizing the opportunity to cater to sinning Mormons from Salt Lake City who come to Wendover in droves to cross the border and partake in the lively activities Nevada has to offer. I don't think there is a single independently owned business in West Wendover or a building over 30 years old, yet every weekend its parking lots are flooded with Utah license plates and its casinos are filled with over-confident college kids, grumpy truck drivers, and zombified retirees tethered to slot machines by coiled credit card lanyards that look like some sort of evil IV drip cord.
The state line is painted across the main street running through town, but beyond the immediate economic differences in Wendover, the border between Utah and Nevada is perhaps the most culturally dramatic state line in the US. On one side you have Utah, the chiseled down version of Brigham Young's grand vision of the great Mormon empire Deseret and perhaps the most religiously conservative state in the country. The divide between church and state in Utah is fuzzy at best, and the state boosts the strictist liquor laws in the country. Much of Western Utah is a no-mans land, populated by some of the largest and dirtiest military, industrial, and toxic-waste sites in the nation. On the other side of the border you have Nevada, a state that allows high-stakes gambling, tolerates prostitution, and has the laxest liquor laws in the nation (there is even a State law that renders public intoxication legal, and explicitly prohibits any local or state law from making it a public offence). Wendover, as a town, is caught in the middle of this cultural divide, and the economic disparity is a result of the uneven rules and regulations imposed by those cultures. On one hand is a fantasyland of unsustainable freedom, and the other a bypassed wasteland of abused and neglected terrain.
The locals joke that if it wasn't for the atom bomb, toxic waste, and casinos, (in that chronological order) the town of Wendover would never have existed. But it seems to me that the real reason for Wendover's existence has more to do with all the things that it isn't. It isn't a natural environment that people would want to live in, making it ideal for bombing ranges and waste incinerators. And "sinful behaivor" isn't tolerated in Utah, making the escape that Nevada provides all the more tempting and lucritive.
wendover report no. 9
wendover report no. 8
the BEAUTIFUL carpet designs of Wendover NV casinos:
The Wendover Nugget:
Montego Bay:
The Rainbow:
The Peppermill:
and last but not least, The Red Garter:
wendover report no. 7
THE HUE OF WAR!
usually it's pretty quiet here on the base. with the exception of the passing trucks on their way to the potash plant or the occasional airplane landing on the runway, things are relatively quiet and peaceful. but this evening things got crazy: out of nowhere it suddenly sounded as if we were under attack. the sounds of explosions and machine-gun fire shook the unit, and it seemed like for one instance we were in really big trouble. kristin posehn (my art-residence room-mate) and i looked out the window to find the air filled with yellow and pink smoke, so we quickly grabbed our cameras and the binoculars and snuck out the back door and up into the tower.
from the tower we could see that in the empty barracks across the way a large group of people, clearly associated with the military, where involved in what looked like a giant game of war. men dressed in camouflage gear and carrying M-16 rifles where running around pretending to kill one another while colored smoke bombs filled the air like some crazy circus event. kristen and i huddled down in the tower watching and laughing, and surely breaking some patriot act law by photographing the entire thing.
i found the choice of colors particularly curious. i mean, of course pink and yellow represent some of the most primal, aggression-inducing colors out there, but in some ways it all seemed more like some bizarre fourth of july celebration than a real simulation of battle (or at least the battles i have seen in movies). (actually, perhaps that is how battles really are, and it's the movies that have them all wrong...) PERHAPS they too were just trying to make some art. maybe they are a little jealous of us over here at the center for land use interpretation and this was there way of saying "hey, check us out, we can make cool stuff too!" i hope that is what it was.
wendover report no. 6
The Sun Tunnels
Yesterday I decided to pack up the van and drive out to the Great Basin Desert and track down Nancy Holt's earthwork/sculpture The Sun Tunnels. I hadn't heard much in the past about Nancy Holt or the Sun Tunnels, but after some recent recommendations and a curiosity to check out that part of the region I figured I should make the trip. Holt, born in 1938, is perhaps best known for her collaborations with, and marriage to, Spiral Jetty creator Robert Smithson, but after seeing both the Spiral Jetty and the Sun Tunnels I have to argue that Holt's work is perhaps the more powerful. She has made a couple other large scale, site-specific sculpture installations, as well as several films and videos that I am very eager to check out.
The Sun Tunnels are in a very remote part of northwestern Utah, truly in the middle of nowhere. They are fifteen miles out on a dirt road and at least 90 miles from a gas station or anything even resembling a town. The tunnels sit in the center of a sprawling basin that was perhaps the work of an ancient glacier, and a two hundred mile view in every direction reveals that the bumpy dirt road leading to the site is the only visible sign of human activity. On the approach, you can see the tunnels as a speck on the horizon, and they slowly grow and take shape as you approach on the bumpy road. A casual passer might easily think this was the work of alien powers.
As I got lost trying to find the ghost town of Lucin (which you must drive through to get to the Sun Tunnels) I realized that the process of experiencing Holt's work of art had already begun; in fact it had started hours earlier. Looking at maps, filling water jugs, and toping the tank off with gas was all part of it, as was getting lost in the desert. The adventure and anticipation of heading out into the great unknown, experiencing the landscape and the climate, and transversing a maze of seldomly used roads was all an important part of the overall experience. Maps do not list roads as tiny as these, and the directions I found on the internet forgot to mention several forks in the road, or the fact that not a single structure in the town of Lucin is still standing. Wandering these dirt roads, which are really no more than two tire tracks through sage brush, you have to think about how tiny you are and how reliant you are on technology. There is no water out there, no phones or cell coverage, and no passing traffic; if your car breaks down you are in big trouble. I meditated on the question of how long it had been since I last changed the oil in the Red Barron (my trusty mini-van with over 170,000 miles on it) and promised it that a tune-up and a new set of tires where just on the other side of this road-trip.
Completed in 1976 and several years in the making, the Sun Tunnels are a configuration of four concrete, tube-like cylinders, or tunnels, that are maybe ten feet long and nine feet in diameter. The cylinders are positioned to align with the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstice, and have small holes in their sides that allow the viewer to see out and rays of sunlight to shine in. In a lot of ways The Sun Tunnels are kind of like a modern day version of Stonehenge; they chart the yearly and daily cycles of the sun while calling attention to the scale and depth of the overwhelming desert landscape. They also remind me of the work of James Turrell in how they deal with light and frame the landscape into fragments. Sitting inside the tunnels, the world outside breaks down into bright, hot circles, while the space inside the tunnels remains cool and soft.
Things seemed to be going good, and we were so far out in the middle of nowhere, with no place really to go and such a clear view in each direction, that I thought perhaps this was a good time to experiment and let Tess off her leash. When we are out in the un-fenced world I usually keep her tied to me with a 15 foot long piece of rope, but she'd been so well behaved lately I thought maybe she really didn't need the rope; maybe she'd stay close even if she wasn't leashed. I un-hooked her, and for the first couple minutes she didn't appear to notice that she wasn't connected to me. But soon I could tell that it was finally sinking in; she realized that she was no longer tethered and her eyes lit up like firecrackers as she started darting towards the horizon. I called her to come back, but she only looked back at me with a glimmer in her eyes. I couldn't tell if it was a "hurry up let's go explore!" kind of look, or a "ha, sucker, I'm outta here" kind of look, but either way she looked very happy and I feared that the husky "call of the wild" was echoing through the valley. I knew things were now really up to her, but I tried yelling one last time, actually shouting, but this time very sternly with anger in my voice. Although she was probably 200 feet away from me, she slowed to a stop, paused, and then looked back at me with consideration. For a moment it seemed like she was weighing her options: Matt? Freedom? Matt? Freedom? I doubt she understood that, with her thick coat and lack of teeth, she wouldn't survive in the hot desert very long, but I understood and realized that if she ran away there would be no happy endings. But then, upon making a decision, Tess started galloping back towards me at a speed I never thought I'd see her move. Her tongue was flopping around, her ears were folded back in an aerodynamic fashion, and she was kicking up a cloud of dust as if she was racing towards the finish line of the Iditarod. She zoomed right by me, made two circles around the van, then jumped into the open side door and looked at me like it was time to go. I said 'good girl' and clipped the leash back on, unsure whether or not the experiment was successful, but very sure that I didn't need another nerve-racking jolt like that for the rest of the day. She gulped down some water and then we went and sat in one of the tunnels and enjoyed the shade and cool concrete. While that was perhaps the scariest three minutes I have experienced in awhile, it didn't seem to faze Tess one bit. She has actually been amazing on this trip and is proving to be a wonderful traveling companion.
wendover report no. 5
wendover report no. 4
wendover report no. 3
(note: the following text is excerpted from this article that details the history of wendover airforce base. the photos were taken may 8, 2007 by me)
Wendover Air Field, along the Utah-Nevada border about 100 miles west of Salt Lake City, was the training site for the 509th Group prior to their mission over Japan to drop the atomic bombs in 1945. On 01 January 1979 the Hill and Wendover Ranges, and part of the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, were consolidated into the Utah Test and Training Range and placed under the management of the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) at Edwards Air Force Base.
By late 1943 Manhattan Project scientists were confident enough to tell the Army Air Forces (AAF) to begin preparing for the atomic bomb's use. At that time, the AAF decided that the B-29 Superfortress aircraft would be the delivery vehicle. It also selected one of its most able aviators, Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., to form and train a group devoted solely to dropping the device. He selected the remote Wendover Army Air Field (AAFld), Utah, as the training site. The 509th's training was to be completely shrouded in the deepest secrecy, therefore the desert isolation of Wendover Field was ideal. In September 1944, Colonel Tibbets moved the squadron to Wendover. From November 1944 to June 1945 they trained continually for the first atomic bomb drop. In April 1945, Colonel Tibbets declared the group ready and moved to its new home, North Field, Tinian, the Marianas. By June 1945, the entire group had arrived and once again, it entered a period of intense training. Not until well after the war did the United States Air Force officially admit that the 509th had trained at Wendover Field.
...A mock enemy city was constructed near the mountains on the base using salt from the nearby Bonneville Salt Flats. This made a fine practice target for the many bomber crews, as did the life-sized enemy battleships and other targets elsewhere on the range. Many of the targets were even electrically illuminated for night practice. Various machine gun ranges allowed gunners to either fire at moving targets from stationary gun emplacements or fire at stationary targets from three machine guns mounted on a railroad car moving along a section of track at up to 40 miles per hour (Wendover's famous "Tokyo Trolley"). Wendover's realistic challenges for aerial gunners and bombardiers caused them to become the best trained in the world.
By late 1943 there were approximately 2,000 civilian employees and 17,500 military personnel at Wendover. Construction at the base continued for most of the war, and by May 1945 the base consisted of 668 buildings, including a 300-bed hospital, gymnasium, swimming pool, library, chapel, cafeteria, bowling alley, two movie theatres, and 361 housing units for married officers and civilians.
...In August 1961 the Air Force inactivated Wendover Air Force Auxiliary Field, with Hill AFB assigned "caretaker status" for the installation. Then in August 1977 Hill AFB turned over most of Wendover Air Force Auxiliary Field to the town of Wendover, Utah, retaining only a 164 acre radar site on the old base. The military career of this remote yet important airfield was at an end.
wendover report no. 2
It is always interesting when you are traveling and you arrive at a destination in the dark of night.
When you arrive to an unfamiliar location during daylight hours, the visual characteristics of the space slowly reveal themselves to you as you approach. You are already visually acclimated to the landscape, and as you see your destination in the distance you can slowly piece things together as you approach; what the land looks like, what the sky looks like, what the buildings look like, etc, one thing at a time. The details slowly reveal themselves as they come into view, allowing you to get your bearings and piece things together step by step.
But when you arrive at a new location in the dark of night the experience is very different. You are not sure what the landscape looks like or what is on the horizon. Are there mountains out there, or rolling flatlands or forest? The world takes on the false yellowish-color of projected light, and everything outside the wash of street lamps or headlights is tucked away in a blanket of darkness. The world becomes more immediate and reduced to pools of artificial light, and everything beyond the reach this light disappears until tomorrow.
I arrived in Wendover around midnight, first passing through the rather well lit Nevada side of town where the casinos are and then into the very barren and dark Utah side where the old air base is located. Guided in by cell phone and a vague memory of an online map of the base that I looked at days earlier, I eventually found The Residence Support Unit tucked away among rows and rows of abandoned barracks. "The Unit," a 12"x60" mobile structure that was originally owned and used by a construction company, but has since been acquired by The Center for Land Use Interpretation and renovated by the fine folks of SIMPARCHand now serves as a sort of "residence hall" for the visiting artists. Exhausted from the eleven hours of driving and feeling a bit disorientated in the darkness of the Utah desert, I was eager to get the mini van parked and get to bed. Upon finding my set of keys and getting situated, I took Tess for a short walk then quickly fell asleep. It was exciting to go to bed not knowing what I would see the next morning outside my bedroom window.
(my first morning i woke up before sunrise and walked outside to find this view directly behind the Unit. I then climbed to the top of the tower and watched the sunrise. the structure in the photo below is 'the unit', the airstream is 'the extra bedroom')
If I know a little bit about something, but haven't seen it, I like to imagine what I think it looks like, and then, upon seeing it, compare my imagined version with the reality that is revealed. It is kind of like a game; usually I am very far off and my pre-conceived images look nothing like what they turn out to be. But occasionally I surprise myself and come very close with my visual predictions.
That said, I was a little overwhelmed when I woke up Monday morning and able to see the world surrounding me. I had an idea of what this place was going to look like, but had no idea to what extent. The sun was hot and bright and revealed horizons so far away that you'd swear you could see the curvature of the Earth. Immediately behind The Unit is an old runway, a control tower, and a giant, rusting hanger that used to be home to the Enola Gay. In the 1940s the Wendover Airfield was one of the biggest and most important airforce bases during WWII. It was a top-secret facility hidden out in the desert and is where bomber squads, including the ones that dropped atomic weapons on Japan, did their training. But after shutting down in the late sixties, the sprawling base now sits in a state of decay. The buildings are weathered and falling down, but because of their historical significance, and obvious economic challenges, it seems like nobody has the heart or resources to actually bulldoze them. The base has been empty for over 30 years, ownership has changed hands several times, and the local economy is so bad that this derelict compound is able to just sit here in a sort of suspended animation as the world around it waits to decide what to do with it.
So far I am pretty amazed and overwhelmed by it all. So many directions to point the camera it is kind of driving me crazy.
(view from the tower overlooking the runway and off towards the salt flats)
wendover report no. 1
for the next two weeks i (along with Tess the toothless wonder-dog) will be doing an "artist residency" in wendover, utah, at the Center for Land Use Interpretation.
today (day one) was a very long 760 mile drive and now it's past midnight, but i am eager to wake up tomorrow morning and start exploring (the residency is on an old abandoned air-force base. my kinda place for sure). while here i will be writing, taking lots of pictures, and working on the next installment of future so bright.
if i've told you once...
so, once again, you could wait and see the new YACHT video through the usual sources, or just go straight to the source.
