Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007 - (Page 26)

The American Dream: Mojave Desert, 2004 M ichael Gordon works at the intersection of the sublime and the technical, making black-and-white photographs of the desert with a four-by-five-inch view camera—the same camera used by Ansel Adams in the early part of the 20th-century. In his photos, light and life emerge from a misperceived landscape, a place better known for “blowing tumbleweeds, animal carcasses, and broken down cars.” Born in Los Angeles, California, Gordon devotes nearly all of his photographic energy to his home state’s considerable wilderness, particularly its deserts. He coaxes images of stunning ethereal beauty from terrain where others see only a bleak landscape. He pulls depth from the theater of light and shadow that is the desert, revealing brightness in darkened corners, exposing fantastic worlds hidden in plain sight. The desert “tells” him to photograph it in black-andwhite—and the results speak for themselves. BQ: What is it about the desert that appeals to you as a photographer? Michael Gordon: I like to be challenged by my subject matter, and I find the desert a pretty difficult place to photograph. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, to seek difficult subject matter, but I very much love the desert—and that challenge of wanting to extract good photographs from a difficult place really keeps me going. What makes it a difficult place to shoot? Well, others may disagree with me on that, but I seek to make photographs that aren’t just casual 2 Broughton Quarterly Winter 2008 snapshots; they’re not the obvious photographs. I’m trying to make a higher level photograph, and for me it’s a big challenge because, in some respects, the desert doesn’t offer a lot of opportunity. Visually, on the surface, it doesn’t appear as rich as, say, the mountains or the coastline. It lacks the color and drama of a lot of other places. But at the same time, all of it is there if one looks deeply enough. Is this the reason you prefer black-andwhite? Yes, absolutely. Actually, I only see the desert as black-and-white. I always carry both color and black-and-white film with me, but when I’m in the desert I’m pretty much seeing black-and-white. It’s an important distinction. Today, a lot of people convert color photographs. But in the desert, I shoot exclusively with black-and-white film. It’s a forethought, not an afterthought. I think a good black-and-white photograph is thought about well in advance. For me, the desert—although it’s full of color, figuratively speaking—is…well, I see it only in a black-and-white way. A good blackand-white photograph gets right down to the essence of whatever that photograph is:

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007

Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007 Contents Contributors Plugged In Notes Calendar 1000Words Destination Wine & Cuisine Introducing Doctor Robot In the Desert Stillness Richard Branson Marketplace Spotlight

Broughton Quarterly - Winter 2007

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