[ Lost in the Landscape ]

one perfect juniper

Sat­ur­day night I was at a gath­er­ing that included Michael Lund­gren, a pho­tog­ra­pher vis­it­ing from Ari­zona where he teaches and works. He’d brought along a port­fo­lio of prints from his Trans­fig­u­ra­tions series, images that will be included in his upcom­ing book by the same title to be pub­lished at the end of this year by Radius Books.

The pho­tographs in the series work together beau­ti­fully, mur­mur­ing softly to each other, echo­ing each other’s forms or tex­tures or moods. With bod­ies of inter­re­lated work like this it’s almost a shame to iso­late a sin­gle image. But books being what they are, you gen­er­ally have space on the front cover for just one, and the one that was picked for Trans­fig­u­ra­tions is a beauty.

So here we have a sin­gle, per­fect, amaz­ingly sym­met­ri­cal juniper tree on a lit­tle rise or ledge over­look­ing an expanse of desert. It feels like the end of the day, that spe­cial time when the land seems to glow from within, when the earth seems to gen­tly release its last reserves of the day’s light, like power dis­charg­ing from a bat­tery, as it pre­pares for night.

Peo­ple often think of the desert as a hos­tile world, but for plants like this juniper that are adapted to what the desert offers and demands, there’s no bet­ter home.

To see more images, visit Michael Lundgren’s site.

July 15 2008 | Categories: art • landscape • photography | Tags: desert plants • deserts • junipers • Michael Lundgren | 2 Comments »