JAMEY STILLINGS: The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar in the Mojave Desert

#8502, 27 October 2012

View North of Ivanpah Units 1, 2, 3 at Sunrise

#8796, 27 October 2012

Tower and Power Block Surrounded by Heliostats of Unit 1

#14110, 3 February 2014

Power Production at Unit 1

#6425, 2 June 2012.

Installed Heliostats in Horizontal or "Safe Mode"

"When I first encountered Jamey Stillings’ photographs of Ivanpah Solar in the Mojave Desert, I was captivated not only by their stark beauty, but by the questions his work raises in our quest to balance the growing demands of a consumer-based culture with the need to preserve Earth’s natural spaces and resources. As the impacts of global climate change become clear, we must grasp that the sum of our human activities is having a huge and negative impact on this planet. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, we have drilled, mined, and transformed much of Earth's wilderness, while burning enough coal, oil, and gas to radically raise the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans—a process that threatens to disrupt life, as we know it, by the end of the century. We face the urgent need to shift away from fossil fuels to energy sources that can profoundly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.” –Robert Redford, Foreword

The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar (Steidl)

In this new monograph, Jamey Stillings synthesizes environmental interests with his longstanding fascination with the intersections of nature and human activity. In October 2010, Stillings began a three-and-a-half-year aerial exploration over what has become the world's largest concentrated solar power plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert of California. From the simple and stark terrain of the preconstruction landscape to the angular forms of the completed solar plant producing 392 megawatts of electricity on 14 square kilometers of public land, Stillings explores dynamic interactions between raw organic forms of nature and those defined by the project's precise geometric lines. Shot from a helicopter during first and last light, Stillings' black-and-white images intrigue with tight abstractions, oblique views of geologic and geometric forms, and broad open views of the dramatic desert basin. (Text courtesy the Publisher)

The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar 

Photographs by Jamey Stillings

Foreword by Robert Redford

Introduction by Anne Tucker

Text by Bruce Barcott

Published by Steidl, 2015

MONA KUHN + STEIDL + PARIS PHOTO: "Private" Book Signing at Paris Photo

Mona Kuhn "PRIVATE"

Monograph Published by Steidl (Nov 2014)

November 15, 2014

"Private" Book Signing at Steidl Booth, ParisPhoto 

Grand Palais, Paris  4PM

"PRIVATE" 

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

"PRIVATE"

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

MONA KUHN + STEIDL + PARIS PHOTO

"“Private” is a personal journey, weaving together the desert beauty with its brutal sense of mortality, understanding mysticism and our place in it." – Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn Talks About "PRIVATE"

with Elizabeth Avedon on L'Oeil de la Photographie

“Private” is a calm and introspective series; a meditative collection of images I took over a period of 2-years. I entered the heart of the American desert, traveling through the Mojave and Arizona regions, entering for the first time the remote parts of a Navajo reservation, areas close to James Turrel’s Roden Crater. “Private” is a personal journey, weaving together the desert beauty with its brutal sense of mortality, understanding mysticism and our place in it.

I usually start a new series with colors. I knew I wanted a little bit of that golden sand skin tonality. I wanted black as it has a certain sense of mortality. You are constantly testing your endurance in the desert, the limits of how long you can stay out there or how debilitating it is to be at 100 and some degrees. Your system really slows down and you can’t think straight. So the whole series is about our vulnerability in that environment as a metaphor to life.

At the time I was reading T. S. Eliot  “The Waste Land.” There are no direct parallels, but I noticed a certain essence of his poem in the work, like a perfume that stays in the air after someone left.

I wanted to approach what is truly strange, beautiful and disorienting about the desert. Aside from vast landscapes and intimate nudes, for the first time I also photographed a few desert animals as metaphors. I was intrigued by their mysticism, like desert shamans, they have an instinct of their own. They know well their place and function in that vast space. Like the California pale moths that fly into the light. Or a black widow tattooed on a woman’s hand. I photographed a majestic black condor, then I photographed a Nephila’s golden spider web. Animals seem to understand nature's balance and survive better than humans in the desert.   

I met a lot of people who moved to the desert because they want to escape or get “off the grid”. But the desert is not for the weak of the heart. It offers an alluring American sense of freedom, but its harsh reality does not cease to remind us of our own limitations. It is shocking to face one’s own mortality. Lee Friedlander once said: “The desert is a wonderful, awful, seductive, alluring stage on which to be acting out the photography game.”

One of the homes I stayed in was built on top of this slanted rock formation. Underneath that slanted rock, there was a large shaded open area, like the shape of a mouth half open. A perfect habitat for rattlesnakes.  This guy had dozens of stretched rattlesnake skins stapled on plywood board to dry out, all over the place.  Hundreds of snakes live right under his rock foundation.  I arrived at places and entered homes I could have never imagined before. But at the same time, being who I am, I wasn’t going to photograph the desert like “Breaking Bad.” I wanted to photograph the desert with a certain human element to relate to the beauty and the harshness. So there is a lot more landscape in this series than most.

The light is incredibly sharp; it contracts the pupils into tiny dots, making views of crystal clarity in which light and land are one. At times, I would photograph just the light by itself, its abstractions, bright sunlight and the graphic dark shadows - it had a powerful and minimal feel to it. 

I photographed some people along the way, at times in their homes. Most homes I have been inside had their curtains closed. People get tired of the heat, you start feeling the weight of light, it becomes heavy. You go into people’s homes and all shades are down. Some of the desert people I met prefer to live in darkness. 

You can easily loose the sense of scale in the desert.

In 1930’s, Georgia O’Keefe would often refer to what she called the “Faraway Nearby”.  I photographed what seemed to have a force and scale of its own, that being macro or micro.

One of these beautiful places was Grand Falls in a Navajo Reserve in Arizona.  It is a larger than life multilayered waterfall system. But the water is not clear; the water carries this monochromatic sand-like tonalities with it. It looks like a waterfall of skin tones.  There, water and skin become one.

On the opposite scale, I found a little spring flower that was so frail. It’s very delicate image shot from above.  T.S. Elliot would say that Spring season lasts only one day in the desert.  The Spring flower rises in the morning and dies at night. 

Along a similar scale curiously I shot from the computer screen an image of California City, a planned but unrealized urban development.  The roads marked out in the dust for a civilization that never really came, seen from a camera orbiting miles above the desert.   Like ruins in reverse.

November 13-16, 2014

Private, solo booth at Jackson Fine Art, ParisPhoto

Grand Palais, Paris

November 15, 2014

Private Book Signing at Steidl Booth, ParisPhoto 

Grand Palais, Paris  4PM

Mona Kuhn Website

MONA KUHN: PRIVATE at AIPAD

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

"I wanted to approach what is truly strange, beautiful and disorienting about the desert. Aside from vast landscapes and intimate nudes, for the first time I also photographed a few desert animals as metaphors. I was intrigued by their mysticism, like desert shamans, they have an instinct of their own. They know well their place and function in that vast space. Like the California pale moths that fly into the light. Or a black widow tattooed on a woman’s hand. I photographed a majestic black condor, then I photographed a Nephila’s golden spider web. Animals seem to understand nature's balance and survive better than humans in the desert." – Mona Kuhn   

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

"I usually start a new series with colors. I knew I wanted a little bit of that golden sand skin tonality. I wanted black as it has a certain sense of mortality. You are constantly testing your endurance in the desert, the limits of how long you can stay out there or how debilitating it is to be at 100 and some degrees. Your system really slows down and you can’t think straight. So the whole series is about our vulnerability in that environment as a metaphor to life."

Two galleries will be previewing Mona Kuhn's upcoming series titled “Private” at AIPAD; Jackson Fine Art and M+B. Steidl is printing the accompanying book in May, to come out in early Fall as part of Paris Photo.

Mona Kuhn: PRIVATE

AIPAD, NY

Jackson Fine Art – Booth #102 and
M+B Gallery – Booth #423
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue (67th St.) 

Mona Kuhn: Acido Dorado
4 April – 10 May 2014
Flowers Gallery
82 Kings Road
London, England

Lee Friedlander once said: 

“The desert is a wonderful, awful, seductive, alluring stage

 on which to be acting out the photography game.”

Read My  

Interview With Mona Kuhn 

in L'Oeil de la Photographie here