The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

On the 109th anniversary of the National Park Service (NPS), this article continues my examination of the official NPS visitor guides over the years, focusing this time on how anniversaries have been commemorated in their design. If you haven’t done so, reading the previous installments of this series will provide context.

Part 5 of an on-going series: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | to be continued

Major milestones — whether for a single park or the entire system — have often been occasions for special logos, taglines, or commemorative editions. Yet the way these anniversaries have been acknowledged has varied widely, depending on the era, the park, and the prevailing design standards. From early, locally driven additions to covers, to the tightly controlled visual language of the Unigrid era, these choices reveal not only changing graphic priorities but also how the NPS has chosen to tell its own story – reinforced by United States Postal Service stamps whose messaging echoes the NPS. By tracing these commemorative markings across time, we can see how the visitor guide itself has been used as both a tool for orientation and a vehicle for celebration.

Yellowstone @ 50 (1922)

In 1922, the National Park Service (NPS) was just six years old. Budgets were small, and there was no mature publicity apparatus to turn Yellowstone’s 50th anniversary into a system-wide event. Commemorations took place within the park: a July 14 gathering at the historic Washburn Expedition site, theatrical presentations at Lake Lodge reenacting President Grant signing the park’s founding bill, and some national press coverage. But there was no coordinated national campaign. The visitor guide booklet for that year mentioned the anniversary only in a subtitle, and the occasion was not framed as a “semi-centennial of the national parks”.

1922 Visitor guide for Yellowstone National Park (discussion of the striking cover photograph).

Yosemite @ 100 (1964)

The Yosemite Centennial marked 100 years since the Yosemite Grant Act, in which Abraham Lincoln set aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove for preservation by the State of California — a precedent many historians consider the conceptual forerunner of the national park idea, even though Yosemite National Park wasn’t created until 1890. The celebration remained park-specific, but it drew national attention to the principle that public lands could be permanently protected for public benefit. Coming two years before the NPS’s 50th anniversary and amid Mission 66 improvements, it showcased Yosemite’s modernization and gave the NPS a chance to test strategies later used in broader campaigns. The 1964 visitor guide folder introduced a dramatically revised design to emphasize the occasion.

1963 (left) and 1964 (right) Yosemite National Park visitor guides.

NPS @ 50 (1966)

By 1966, the NPS had grown into a large, unified bureaucracy managing parks nationwide. The 50th anniversary coincided with — and served as the culmination of — Mission 66, a decade-long modernization program explicitly planned to conclude in the anniversary year. The milestone drew system-wide focus, including a US Postal Service stamp and publicity around more than 100 new visitor centers and related facilities. The 50th was as much a celebration of institutional maturity and infrastructure achievement as it was an anniversary. Many brochures from the years leading up to 1966 included a short paragraph about Mission 66 (see some of them), but the special 50th-anniversary emblem appears on a more limited set and was added by stamping the brochures afterward — I’ve seen it only on three park brochures.

Top: Two copies of 1966 Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park Visitor guides with the “1916-1966” stamped differently on the cover. Bottom left: Two copies of 1966 Crater Lake National Park, with and without the stamp. Bottom right: 1966 Haleakalā National Park with “1916-1966” stamped on the back page.

National Park Service 1916-1966 First Day Cover (another FDC and details about the Parkscape logo).

Yellowstone @ 100 (1972)

By 1972, Yellowstone’s creation had been reframed as the birth of the “national parks idea,” a story with global resonance. The NPS treated the centennial as a system-wide commemoration — “100 Years of National Parks”, the first major system-wide commemoration of national parks. The campaign goals were to reinforce the parks ideals, deepen conservation messaging, encourage cooperation, and foster international dialogue. The government also wanted to highlight the American heritage of national parks during a period of environmental awakening (Earth Day had just begun in 1970). The centennial aligned with a push to expand the park system and promote recreation as a patriotic, unifying activity.

1972 joint map brochure for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

The distinctive logo was a stylized graphic representing Old Faithful geyser. Refer to the opening image for a picture of a badge featuring a version of it with the left-aligned words “National Parks Centennial 1872-1972″ inside the circle, a combination that I could not locate anywhere in print: at the small size the graphic was commonly printed, the words would not have been legible. Instead, in brochures, the words were printed outside of the logo. In the years 1972 and 1973, in addition to their respective pocket guides, the two neighboring Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, once considered for inclusion into a single enlarged park, issued a joint larger brochure (4×9” versus 3 1/4″ x 5 5/8″ for the pocket guides) featuring a map of each park on each side, but no other visitor information – an also taken by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The 1972 edition of the map brochure for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks included the centennial logo and the left-aligned words on the cover. Besides those two parks, the logo and inscription appeared on pocket-guide brochures throughout the system, with the words in a single line.

National park pocket guides with the centennial logo and inscription printed.

Of the 39 national parks then in existence, 36 used the pocket-guide format; 28 featured the centennial logo and text prominently at the bottom of the plain panel. As far as I know, two park brochures were printed without those markings, but had them added through a stamp. By the way, if you haven’t heard of Platt National Park, it was the black sheep of the national parks. In 1976, the NPS eventually managed to merge it with Arbuckle Recreation Area into the more appropriately named Chickasaw National Recreation Area.

Two national park pocket guides with the centennial logo and inscription added afterward by stamp – with words on a single line or four left-aligned lines

Only seven lacked it entirely. Three of those seven — Hawai‘i Volcanoes, Haleakalā, and the newly redesignated Arches — used non-pocket-guide formats whose photo-illustrated covers were not conducive to the mark; the others (Isle Royale, Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth Cave, Wind Cave) used pocket guides but, for reasons unclear, did not receive the markings. The centennial logo and tagline was also similarly featured in the pocket guides for other park units across the entire system.

Unlike the 1966 commemoration that consisted of a single stamp, the USPS released a series of four stamps plus a quartet, each dedicated to a different park site: Yellowstone and Denali National Parks, and three other national park units: Cape Hatteras National Seashore (the first unit with such a designation), City of Refuge National Historical Park (standing for all 170 historic sites; now Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park), and the oddball Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts (a new dimension in the NPS, centered around an outdoor amphitheater; now Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts). This approach mirrored the NPS strategy that year: the Yellowstone centennial was not just a local milestone but a system-wide moment, emphasizing the breadth of the national park idea.

1972 National Parks Centennial First Day Covers. The phrase ‘Parks, Man and His Environment’ reframed Yellowstone’s anniversary as a forward-looking charge: parks were no longer only about scenic preservation, but about the intertwined future of people and nature. Text in the back of the envelopes says of Yellowstone:

As the first national park it is symbolic of the entire national park movement which has resulted in the creation of national parks in more than 100 nations

and

In the National Parks Centennial the nation celebrates the 100th anniversary of a uniquely American idea, which has taken root around the world to the lasting benefit of mankind. Now in an era increasingly concerned with the thoughtless squandering of our natural birthright, National Parks can help us to renew our precious contacts with the natural world that gives and sustains life. One hundred years ago a group of Americans worked hard to assure that this nation would preserve its heritage of natural beauty and wonder. The National Parks Centennial seeks both to honor and to perpetuate the results of their vision and courage.

Mount Rainier @ 100 (1999), Rocky Mountain @ 100 (2015), Hawai‘i Volcanoes @ 100 (2016), Grand Canyon @ 100 (2019)

Mount Rainier’s centennial in 1999 marked 100 years since its establishment as the first national park in the Pacific Northwest. While not as significant as Yellowstone’s anniversary, it reflected a growing trend of treating individual park milestones as branding opportunities. In Rainier’s case, the NPS allowed a small centennial tagline on its Unigrid brochure — consistent with standards that generally avoid adding agency or partner logos to maintain the design uniformity sustained since Massimo Vignelli’s Unigrid system was adopted in 1977. Like several other parks (see examples), Rocky Mountain NP had a widely used official centennial logo in 2015, but it did not appear on its Unigrid; the same was true for Hawai‘i Volcanoes in 2016 and Grand Canyon in 2019. Other national parks celebrated their centennial but did not feature a centennial tagline on their unigrids. Unlike visitor guides from the early days of the NPS that changed each year, the unigrid designs spanned multiple years. Whether a park added a centennial tagline to its Unigrid typically depended on local choice, reprint timing, and budget.

Unigrid brochures with a Centennial tagline (Rocky Mountain National Park issued one for the year 2014 and another for the year 2015).

NPS @ 100 (2016)

By 2016, the NPS had become a national cultural brand managing more than 400 units. The centennial campaign was a fully professional, multi-platform effort aimed at engaging the next generation of visitors and stewards. Its flagship initiative, Find Your Park, sought to broaden inclusion through media partnerships, special events, and targeted outreach. An extensive range of private businesses released commemorative products, showcasing their enthusiasm for the national parks and the NPS. Wanting to add my modest part to the celebration, I timed the publication of Treasured Lands for 2016, as The New York Times noted:

this year the centennial of the National Park Service has been the occasion of exhibits, documentaries, presidential proclamations and many books. The most glorious of these is TREASURED LANDS

The centennial logo’s main element was the number 2016, where “0” was replaced with a light-green arrowhead outline whose full version was the NPS emblem, accompanied by matching green lettering for the word “centennial”. Refer to the opening image for a digital version. It was flown in space in celebration of the National Park Service Centennial. The arrowhead outline was also part of National Park Foundation and National Park Service logos, the former becoming the only partner logo featured on Unigrid visitor guides.

Dual National Park Service and National Park Foundation logos

While rather bland, the new designs were meant to provide a fresh new look as the NPS tried to connect with new audiences. Their simplicity made them more versatile, as they could stay legible while used small in various media. However, one medium was the centennial logo did not appear were the individual park Unigrid brochures. The only enduring document where I could find them is the system-wide map and guide. Although the logo is included, it would have been easy to miss, as it did not appear on the front page, but rather on the back page, in a discreet position. That’s nowhere near the level of prominence the 1972 geyser logo had on most pocket guides, where it often sat bold at the bottom of the cover.

Top: 2011 National Park System Map cover, unlike individual unit unigrids, the date of issue is printed on the cover. Middle: 2016 National Park System Map cover, date of issue is the NPS centennial day. Bottom: Verso of the 2016 National Park System map, note the Centennial logo on the bottom right corner

The USPS issued 16 stamps: 10 national parks and 6 other national park units. This number was double from 1972, however, none of them mentioned anything about the centennial. Even the pane featured just the title ““National Parks”; neither the centennial logo nor even the words “Centennial” or “1916–2016” appear anywhere. So while 1966 and 1972 stamps functioned as explicit commemoratives, the 2016 issue was positioned more as a celebration of parks in general rather than a formal centennial mark. It was consistent with the NPS’s broader approach that year, where the centennial logo wasn’t used much on Unigrids. Instead, it was featured in posters, banners, rack cards, and especially in digital media — reflecting a marketing-driven era, where the centennial was celebrated through outreach and engagement rather than through enduring, printed symbols.

USPS 2016 national parks stamp panel.

2016 Theodore Roosevelt National Park First Day Covers featuring QT Luong’s photograph. Note the deviations from the official centennial logo (which features a light green empty arrowhead). While stamps are issued by the USPS, those envelopes were not official.

Yellowstone @ 150 (2022)

While the 100th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park was positioned as a proxy for all national parks, leading to national celebrations, its 150th anniversary was treated as a regional event. The context was also different: the 150th took place in the wake of the 2016 NPS Centennial, which had already absorbed national attention, and the U.S. was still in a period of pandemic recovery. The event was branded as “Yellowstone 150”, not tied to the NPS as a whole. Instead, emphasis was on tribal sovereignty, inclusion, and ecological stewardship of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, reflecting contemporary values rather than mass tourism. The NPS marked it like some of the other individual park 100th anniversaries, issuing again just a commemorative unigrid with a tagline – bringing this article to a full circle.

2022 Yellowstone National Park unigrid brochure.

These anniversary emblems remind us that national parks are as much cultural constructs as natural landscapes, a perspective that increasingly guides some of my photographic work — and one that underscores the inseparability of people and nature.

PS: I am still trying to complete my collection and I have numerous duplicates, so if you’d be interested in donating, trading, selling, or buying vintage brochures for any NPS units that are currently national parks, please let me know.

Part 5 of an on-going series: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | to be continued .

https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/the-trek-zanskar-1989

In the summer of 1989, I set foot in Asia for the first time—a formative journey that expanded both my view of the world and the role photography could play in it. A few years earlier, college friends at Polytechnique had introduced me to climbing, and I had taken to it immediately. Photography followed naturally: a way to share the beauty and scale of the high peaks with those who couldn’t be there. Before that, my only venture beyond Europe was a brief stint at a military skydiving camp in Morocco—memorable, but worlds apart from what lay ahead.

In the winter of 1987, beginning what would become a productive decade of ice climbing, I enrolled in a course offered by Godefroy Perroux, a pioneer and central figure in French waterfall ice climbing. Relaxed and generous, Godefroy had a wide circle in the climbing community. One of his friends, Richard, came along to assist. Among the attendees was Chantal Mauduit, who would soon make her mark in the mountains. We all stayed at Godefroy’s cozy cabin near the Alpe d’Huez ski resort. The time we spent together led to friendships, and eventually Richard invited Chantal and me to join him for a Himalayan trek.

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As a young mountaineer, I dreamed of climbing in the Himalayas. But for my first visit, I thought it wiser to begin with a trek rather than attempt a summit. Part of the Himalayas – including Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world – are in India. Richard proposed we cross the Himalayan range from north to south via Shingo La, one of the range’s more accessible passes—free of steep slopes or glaciers, yet still above 5,000 meters (16,000 ft). From the pass, we’d attempt a nearby undocumented 6,000-meter peak. Though modest compared to Himalayan giants, it stood over 1,000 meters higher than Mont Blanc, the highest summit in Western Europe.

Our trek would take place in Zanskar, a remote high-altitude valley on the eastern side of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, now part of Ladakh. Home to about 10,000 people and isolated by mountain barriers, Zanskar had seen little outside contact. Ladakh had been closed to foreigners until 1974 due to regional border tensions with Pakistan and China. Even as tourism to Ladakh increased through the 1980s, it was mostly to Leh and the wide Indus River Valley. Zanskar remained far off the main circuit, inaccessible to all but the most determined travelers. In the first years after reopening, the area saw only a few hundred tourists pass through its capital, Padum. If Zanskar was known in France at all, it was largely thanks to the work of photographer Olivier Föllmi, reportedly the first Westerner to walk the frozen Zanskar River, resulting in his book “The Frozen River” (1990). One of the coldest inhabited areas on Earth, Zanskar is cut off by snow for eight months of the year. But from mid-January to early February, the frozen Zanskar River forms a perilous hundred-mile ice route between Leh and Padum.

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Just reaching the starting point of the trek became one of the most intense experiences of my first 24 years. When I stepped off the plane in New Delhi, groggy with my first experience of jet lag, I was plunged into a world unlike any I had known—a dense, a dense chaos that marked my first encounter with a developing country. Richard planned two consecutive treks—one with Chantal, and one with me—so I had a few days on my own before we met. The conditions at the cheap hostel where I stayed were a shock, but it was on the street that I felt most overwhelmed and bewildered: the chaos, colors, tuk-tuk and crowd noises, smells, heat, sacred cows in the traffic, and the open, confronting poverty. Still, I felt temporarily good when I summoned the will to try street food—abundant vegetarian fare that turned out to be both new and delicious. As if that weren’t enough stimulation, I took a day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, riding a rickety local tour bus while Bollywood videos blasted on the overhead screen, competing with the roar of the wind through open windows.

After managing to locate the Indian Airlines office and purchase a one-way ticket to Leh, I finally reunited with Richard. From there, we boarded a large truck bound for Padum, Zanskar’s main town, lay 62 miles from Leh as the crow flies. Though 276 miles away by e roads 1 and 301, the journey took three days. Narrow, rough, winding, and subject to landslides, the road from Kargil to Padum had been built in 1978 and was navigable only by the sturdiest vehicles. Our truck carried a dozen passengers in its open bed, without seats or roof. On the unpaved road, we were quickly caked in dust. I began to suffer from diarrhea—likely from eating fruit sold by street vendors in Delhi—and Richard scolded me for my ignorance of precautions to be taken in developing countries. He mentioned that Chantal had been similarly sick and had resorted to a steady diet of pills. With no practical way to stop for toilet breaks, I stopped eating altogether until we arrived in Padum. Between the illness, the rough transport, my fasting, and the high elevation of 3,600 meters (12,000 feet), I arrived barely able to walk.

Padum was the southermost point of the road. All travel beyond had to be on foot. Richard left for a solo week-long trek while I recovered in a basic guesthouse there, making endless visits to a hole-in-the-ground toilet – very sustainable as it doesn’t waste precious water and generates compost. After a few days, I had regained enough strength for a short excursion to the Sani monastery (where a bite from a feral dog gave me days of anxiety), followed by a four-day round-trip trek to Phuktal Gompa (monastery). That remote sanctuary, a honeycomb of fortress-like structures clinging to the mouth of a giant cave above a gorge, resonating with the sound of bells, horns, and chants, remains one of the most spectacular and affecting places I ever stayed.

Ladakh, once a Himalayan kingdom, shares more geography and culture with Tibet than with the rest of India. Hearing the Dalai Lama state during his (current) 2025 visit that Tibetan Buddhist culture is better preserved in Ladakh than in Tibet itself – where it has been eroded by Chinese coercion – reminded me just how intact that world still felt when I walked through it decades earlier. More than 90% of the population practices Tibetan Buddhism. As a child, my parents regularly took me to a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in the outskirts of Paris, across the valley from the Polytechnique campus. I still remember the gentle scent of incense, the delicate lotus motifs, and the serene statues. In Ladakh, by contrast, the gompas felt darker and more elemental. Murals of fierce deities with bulging eyes, spinning prayer wheels, and the dim glow of butter lamps created an atmosphere at once visceral and mysterious. Every village has its monastery with hauntingly vivid, centuries-old artwork, and trails are lined with chortens — Buddhist shrines that I learned to pass clockwise, in respect. I memorized a few mantras, especially essential in Tibetan Buddhism, to help pace my steps. They reinforced the meditative and sometimes monotonous nature of walking all day long through such austere landscapes. Ladakh is a high-altitude semi-desert in the rain shadow north of the Himalayas. Outside the irrigated barley and lentil fields near villages, little greenery grows. Encounters on the trail were rare, and none of them included foreigners. Conversation was limited to signs and gestures, but the warmth I felt from the villagers transcended language. That people living in such difficult conditions could radiate such calm contentment seemed to speak to the spiritual depth of their beliefs. Realizing that this pre-industrial culture, although so different from mine, had an equal validity, I developed great respect for it and tried to learn as much as I could.

Looking back now, I see that this early exposure to another way of life—where material means were few, but meaning was abundant—planted the seeds for the themes that would guide my work later. Landscapes are not empty stages but interwoven with the lives, beliefs, and survival strategies of those who dwell in them. Resilience and reverence can coexist in places where life is carved from scarcity. To inhabit a landscape is to enter into a compact with it—one that modern development often breaks unilaterally.

After Richard and I explored the open valley surrounding Padum, we began the 90-mile trek to Darcha, a town south of the main Himalayan crest. The route followed the valleys of the Tsarap and Kurgiak Chu rivers. It wasn’t a recreational trail but the only connection between scattered villages, with foot and horse the only means of transportation. In the early stages, we slept and ate in those villages. Services were minimal, as inhabitants lived in near-complete self-sufficiency based on farming and cattle-rearing. A few locals offered us a place to sleep—bare rooms with dirt floors—and simple meals of roti (flatbread) and dal (lentils), often with tea flavored with yak butter of indeterminate age. In this zero-waste society, yaks are rarely eaten; they are too essential for farming, milk, transport, fur, and even dung, the main source of fuel in this treeless region.

Because we carried a rope, crampons, ice axes, and other mountaineering gear for our summit attempt, we hired a porter who also ferried extra food and camp necessities—essential as we ascended into higher terrain with no permanent habitation. We each hiked at our own pace and typically met up at the night’s camp. Only later did I realize that what we were doing wasn’t backpacking in remote terrain—it was trekking in the truest sense: relying on local knowledge and hospitality, moving through a living cultural landscape rather than immersing in self-contained solitude.

Since the Himalaya Range acts as a barrier shielding Ladakh from most of the monsoon, the weather had been mostly warm and dry until we reached the Shingo-La (pass). As clouds gathered, we pushed upward on snowy ridges to about 5,800 meters (19,000 ft) according to Richard’s altimeter, but with no weather forecast and rising uncertainty, we decided to abandon the summit attempt. Descending into Himachal Pradesh, we were struck by how the landscape changed. On the southern side of the Himalayas, the green valleys of Lahaul replaced the dry mineral terrain of Ladakh. Eventually we reached Darcha, where the road resumed. From there, it was a bumpy but mercifully seated ride to Keylong. We spent a few days exploring the area, including the Kunzum La (pass) connecting Lahaul from the Spiti Valley. After misjudging a side ascent, I was caught by nightfall and sheltered with a welcoming sheep herder who opened his encampment to me without words. Afterward, we continued to Manali where we parted ways, with me taking the bus for another long day to New Delhi.

The journey remains one of my most formative experiences. Though set in the mountains, it pushed me far beyond my comfort zone and into contact with a way of life entirely different from my own. Until then, most of my photography had focused on mountaineering in the Alps. This was my first real cultural immersion—and the moment my interest toward human geography and place-based storytelling began. I went to Zanskar chasing altitude, but what stayed with me were not the peaks—it was the quiet durability of life in their shadow. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that encounter altered my sense of what photography could do: not just depict grandeur, but bear witness to the fragile balance between place, people, and time.

During an entire month in India, I had exposed only ten rolls of film. I hadn’t yet learned that film is cheap compared to travel. I was dismayed that due to a loading mistake, the first one, which included the Taj Mahal, was blank – two decades would pass before I would return with a much different camera. At the time, I shot Kodachrome, a slide film reputed for color but unforgiving of exposure errors. Since I didn’t bring a tripod, low-light photography, including all interiors, was not possible. My knowledge of photography was still lacking, and most of the photographs from this trip were technically or compositionally flawed. But unlike early digital media, the physical slides remain fully readable, and their color barely faded. Their slightly aged palette proved surprisingly apt at restoring memories to a vivid status. The place names and dates that I had written on the slide pages formed an accurate record.

Those slides, imperfect as they are, belong to a lineage of exploration photography that once sought to make remote places visible to others. But the ethic of that practice has evolved. Today, I no longer see photography as an act of “revealing the untouched,” but rather as a way of witnessing change—and asking what is at stake in that change, especially for those who live closest to the land.

While retracing the trip for this write-up, I turned to online maps, and was shocked to discover that the once-remote and rough trail from Padum to Darcha that we trekked is now a paved two-lane road. Although some parts had been completed earlier, the final stretch over Shingo La only opened last summer. A tunnel under the pass is under construction to make the route passable year-round. Further north, the traditional frozen Zanskar River route is now also a paved road, completing what is now known as the Zanskar Highway. I am grateful I undertook the journey when it still was remote, raw, and difficult. My images—though imperfect—have become not just personal memories but historical traces, glimpses of a world before modern infrastructure reached it.

In 1989, the region still saw very few outsiders. I met no other foreigner during my four-day walk to Phuktal and encountered only a handful in Padum itself. Zanskar still felt utterly remote— not just geographically, but culturally. The journey felt as much an act of endurance as of curiosity, far removed from today’s fly-in trekking culture and convenience tourism. Since then, the number of visitors has increased by a factor of twenty. Mass tourism introduces outside values that risk unraveling traditional ways of life, inviting young people to equate Western lifestyles with progress—even when those models conflict with local needs and ecological wisdom. Few reap the greatest benefits, while the heavy social and environmental costs are borne by many. The opening of roads brings opportunity—but also loss. This tension mirrors what I’ve since encountered closer to home. My early experience in Zanskar showed me how landscape and culture are inseparable. That insight continues to guide me.

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/the-living-colorado-photographing-the-grand-canyon-from-the-river/

Part 3 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3

The Colorado River is the main waterway of the American Southwest. Over millions of years, it has carved the Grand Canyon, the most spectacular intersection of water and stone, time and motion. The Grand Canyon segment of the Colorado is not only its most dramatic stretch but also the longest and wildest continuous white-water route in North America.

A journey down this river is both intimate and monumental. When you step into side canyons — as explored in the previous post — you find sheltered grottos, delicate gardens, and sculpted narrows. But from the main channel, you perceive the canyon as a single, unified force: a vast cathedral of rock, rising in near-vertical walls that soar 5,000 feet above. The river at your feet feels alive, breathing and shifting beneath you, oscillating between languid stretches and explosive rapids. This is not merely a passage through a canyon; it is a passage into the deep memory of the land, where each bend and each rapid holds a fragment of geologic and human history.

A rapid is a section of river where the water surface becomes turbulent due to a sudden increase in gradient, flow constriction, or the presence of obstacles like rocks or ledges. Rapids are among the most vivid evidence that a river is alive. Before Glen Canyon Dam, each major flood reworked the canyon’s entire rapid system. The river flow was wild and unpredictable, shaped by natural cycles. Now, controlled flows have sharply reduced flood peaks, and daily releases often fluctuate for power generation. The rapids persist but have become more fixed. Between Lees Ferry (mile 0) and Diamond Creek (mile 225), there are approximately 160 named rapids, with a dozen considered Class V.

The international scale of river difficulty rates rapids from Class I to Class VI based on technical complexity, risk, and rescue difficulty. Class I rapids are easy while Class VI is considered unrunnable. If a Class VI rapid is consistently navigated without catastrophic outcomes, it is reclassified as Class V. The scale is exponential — each step up reflects a significant increase in difficulty — and can vary with water levels. Unlike ocean waves born of wind and distance, which travel, rapid waves stand still, shaped by rock and collision — fluid yet fixed, chaos anchored in place. In the biggest rapids of the Grand Canyon, standing waves can reach 10 to 20 feet in height, depending on flow conditions.

As I expected, our large motorized raft was more stable than the oar raft I rode a decade ago. Light and responsive, the smaller watercrafts are lifted by waves. This results in considerable vertical motion that can be dangerous if one is not careful, as I unfortunately learned by experience. But what I didn’t expect is that while the weight and speed of the larger motorized raft help them plow smoothly through waves rather than riding them, this often sends walls of water crashing directly over the bow. Compounding this effect, guides often aim directly into waves rather than trying to avoid the biggest hits. In addition, AZRA’s particular seating arrangement calls for passengers to lower and wedge themselves between the gear boxes during the largest rapids. While this eliminates any risk of passenger accident, the lower position makes you even more exposed to water onslaught.

The motorized rafts are about 35 feet in length. How wet you get depends largely on where you sit. At the rear, it’s mostly splash, comparable to what you’d experience at an amusement park water ride. In the front, you get soaking wet. On the first day, I found myself sitting in the front because I was the last on shore after helping participants to embark Sitting at the front offers the best photographic opportunities, since your view ahead is entirely unobstructed. On the second day, I offered to switch seats with participants, but seeing how wet I got — and on a first day that didn’t feature big rapids — nobody took me up on the offer, so I ended up sitting at the front for the rest of the trip.

Since this is a river trip, maybe one should expect to get wet. The reason that is consequential is that the Colorado’s water is surprisingly cold year-round, regardless of season and air temperature. This is because it is fed from the bottom of Lake Powell via the Glen Canyon Dam. At the start, that temperature is a bone-chilling 45°F. Absorbing solar radiation and mixing with warmer side streams, it reaches about 50°F at Phantom Ranch, midway the trip, and then 60°F at Lake Mead.

Even on a warm day, once you are soaked in water that cold, it can take a while to warm up, as all your layers remain wet. On the day we tackled the big rapids of the Upper Granite Gorge in cloudy weather, I was barely able to keep warm despite wearing one of the heaviest fleece jackets underneath a mountaineering-grade shell. Unlike paddle vests that have rubber seals, that top-of-the line jacket was not sealed at the wrists and neck. The massive sheets of water from the larger rapids send water through those openings that end up soaking everything. Even though wearing thermal long-sleeve underwear tops (synthetic, as cotton is very slow drying) may sound overkill in May, those were essential to stay warm while being constantly drenched. Seeing how pale I looked after disembarking, my friend Régis urged me to go change quickly into dry clothes instead of joining in the human chain helping unload the raft.

There is not an instant of boredom on the river. I kept my river guidebok within reach, hoping to read between rapids — but the canyon never allowed it. Every moment demanded attention, demanded presence. Every bend hides a new surprise: sometimes it’s the way light ignites a wall into glowing amber or carves deep shadows into mysterious depths; other times it’s a sudden shift in water color, a hidden eddy, or a new rock face emerging. The interplay of light, water, and geology transforms each stretch into a unique, fleeting world. No two river bends are ever the same — each moment feels like a discovery.

Photographing from the raft reminded me of aerial photography, where you are also operating from a moving platform. Besides the technical necessities such as a high shutter speed, the challenge is to anticipate compositions. On a charter flight it may be possible to ask the pilot to fly back, but on the river, there is mostly no going upstream. While the position of the canyon walls does not change rapidly as you float, the foreground elements do. Those include the river itself, and it is the prominent presence of the river that distinguishes landscape images made from the raft from those taken from the shore. Those photos are more challenging to make, but they capture the essence of a river trip and cannot be made from land.

Given what happened ten years ago, this time I did not plan to photograph during the rapids and therefore did not bring an amphibious camera system. Influenced by the images of dories — small, lightweight wooden boats pioneered by Martin Litton that dance dramatically through rapids — in The Hidden Canyon (1977), John Blaustein’s book with text by Edward Abbey, I also assumed that a motorized pontoon raft would not provide enough excitement in the rapids to justify the risk. However, after seeing how safe AZRA’s seating arrangements were — and the amount of water coming directly at us during the rapids — I tried to capture splashes with my antiquated phone, which as the only waterproof camera I had brought, was still better than nothing.

Wanting to photograph every moment until the last possible instant before rapids up to medium size, I would hurry to stow my main camera safely just before the raft hit the waves. It’s a nervy way of working — trying to hold on for as long as possible while making sure the camera isn’t exposed when a crashing surge arrives. On smaller rapids, your body can act as a shield; on bigger ones, you need to stow the camera in a waterproof enclosure. Although a Pelican case closes quickly, its weight and hard sides make it a hazard if not properly secured. The waterproof Lowepro DryZone bags can sit on your knees, but their drysuit-style zippers are hard to operate quickly enough. This leaves a small dry bag as the most practical option. The outfitter-provided day-use dry bag (18″ wide × 24″ long, 30 liters) is adequate. There’s always a trade-off between access and protection — on occasion I’ve stowed two cameras in it, although that is far from ideal. I’d rather risk a scratch or two on the cameras than potentially miss a moment.

This method of working made it possible to photograph at the tongue of rapids — the V-shaped patch of smooth water at the head of each rapid. There, just before the chaos, the river gathers itself. The current tightens into a dark, glassy V, flanked by choppy riffles or foam. It resembles a liquid arrow drawn taut between canyon walls or boulders, converging into a single path. The surface often turns mirror-like, paradoxically calm — a compressed lens of force just before release. This smoothness sometimes captures distorted canyon reflections. Then, at the tongue’s tip, the water folds and drops into chaos: breaking into crashing waves, frothing haystacks, and explosive turbulence. Visually, it marks a threshold — the river’s transition from order to disorder, from grace to violence — pulling the eye, and the raft, into the heart of the rapid. This is my favorite moment to capture on the river, but the risks to the equipment are high, as even in a medium-size rapid, a towering wave may follow immediately after.

To float the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is to realize that, despite all efforts to tame it, the river remains fiercely alive. When Glen Canyon Dam was completed, some in the Bureau of Reclamation claimed that the Colorado below it was already a “dead river” — its natural cycles severed, its floods controlled — as justification to propose additional dams in the Grand Canyon. But Time and the River Flowing (1964) was published precisely by the Sierra Club to counter that narrative, revealing through photography and words that the river’s spirit persisted in every eddy, rapid, and shifting reflection, ultimately helping stop those projects. Edward Abbey famously called for removing Glen Canyon Dam in The Hidden Canyon (1977), a demand that once seemed radical but now enters serious conversation as reservoir levels fall and restoration is reimagined. This dynamic between wildness and human control quietly threads through much of my work, from remote national parks to urban waterways. Although they are traditional color landscapes, the photographs presented here engage with questions of intervention, resilience, and our evolving relationship to the natural world. Photographing from the raft is not just about capturing grand views; it is an act of bearing witness to a living force that still shapes the American West — and a call to recognize and protect what remains untamed.

Part 3 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/landscape-from-the-bottom-highlights-of-a-grand-canyon-by-raft-photo-expedition

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Anyone peering into the Grand Canyon for the first time is struck by two immediate, shocking facts: it comes without warning, and it is absolute. There is no soft transition, no gentle slope that prepares you. One moment you’re on the rim, the next you’re staring into an immense and unfathomable chasm—a vertical mile deep and layered with two billion years of Earth’s history. But as staggering as this view is, it is also detached. Monumental, yes, but distant.

To truly understand the canyon’s complexity, one must take a closer look—and that closer look is not available from the rim. From above, the Grand Canyon can feel overwhelming in scale but paradoxically simple in appearance: a vast, continuous chasm with layered rock receding into hazy distance. But that view flattens its richness. The real Grand Canyon isn’t a single space—it’s a world composed of thousands of distinct micro-landscapes, each shaped by variations in rock type, erosion, water flow, elevation, and exposure to sun and wind.

There are alcoves where hanging gardens flourish in perpetual shade, and just around the bend, scorched terraces where nothing survives. Slickrock domes rise beside narrows barely wider than your shoulders. Ancient lava flows cross horizontal sedimentary layers, and entire amphitheaters are carved into soft shale and limestone. Rock that appears static from afar turns out to shimmer with embedded fossils, mineral streaks, or desert varnish when seen up close. Even the soundscape shifts constantly—from deafening rapids to dry, echoing silence.

Photographically, this means that the Grand Canyon is not one landscape but a multitude—revealed slowly, intimately, and often unexpectedly. The complexity isn’t just geological; it’s sensory, ecological, and spatial. To engage with it requires movement through it, time within it, and the flexibility to respond to what the canyon offers moment by moment. That’s why being at river level, day after day, changes your relationship to the place. You stop seeing “the canyon” and start seeing canyons, alive, and endlessly varied.

Sure, it’s possible to backpack into the canyon, and doing so offers an unmatched sense of immersion – and effort. But it can also be grueling, especially if you bring serious photography equipment. When I hiked from the North Rim to Deer Creek (a waterfall minutes away from where our raft beached) via Thunder River with my view camera in the early 2000s, such was the amount of water to be carried that despite not packing a tent – exposing myself to a bothersome rodent on the last night of my outing – I started with a seventy pound backpack. On my way out, I climbed over five thousand feet. Even if you have the stamina and skill, your access remains limited. Trails are few, and they constrain your movements to established routes.

A river trip offers something radically different: easy access. From the river, you are no longer confined to the rim’s distant view or the narrow confines of a corridor trail – as are called the main trails, the Bright Angel, South Kaibab, and North Kaibab Trails, which together account for over 75% of all trail usage in the park. You travel through the heart of the canyon, often along sections unreachable by foot. Sculpted narrows, lush hanging gardens, ephemeral waterfalls, ancient rock art panels, and side canyons hidden from above—these are features only the river unlocks.

For our journey, we traveled by motorized raft. While this meant giving up some of the quiet solitude, sense of adventure, and intimacy of oar-powered travel, it offered a major advantage: speed. In spring, the Colorado River flows at about four miles per hour. A motor rig also reaches four miles per hour, resulting a speed of eight miles per hour. In contrast, an oar trip travels at half that speed, meaning more time in transit. With the motor, we reached each day’s destinations faster, giving us significantly more time on land, where the richest photographic opportunities awaited.

There are certainly compelling images to be made from the raft, and I’ll explore those in the next installment. But there are inherent limitations: you can’t stop for long, the boat is always in motion, and shifting your viewpoint is limited. On land, you reclaim control. You can take your time, explore angles deliberately, get close to your subject, work with a tripod, and use slow shutter speeds. Some serious photographers barely shoot while floating. They wait for the landings.

In some sense, every stop holds potential. At one location chosen for lunch simply because the cliffs offered shade, two of us wandered a short distance and discovered a hidden pocket of white sand tucked beneath a deep overhang of red sandstone. While the rest of the group ate and rested, we happily photographed in that quiet space. Moments like that are a reminder that in the Grand Canyon, beauty isn’t limited to the named landmarks. But even considering only the well-known sites, there are far more photographic opportunities than a single trip can accommodate. That’s especially true if you’re trying to optimize your time around the quality of light, as we were on this photo-centric expedition. Coordinating to be at certain locations at specific times was one of the more challenging aspects of the trip and required close collaboration with our river guides. Take, for example, the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers, where we wanted to be at sunrise. Camping is prohibited for miles upstream of the confluence, so the only way to photograph it at sunrise is to camp directly across the river. To secure that rare campsite, we arrived by midday the day before. The next morning, we ferried across at first light—leaving camp set up—and returned for breakfast after the shoot. That return trip, against the current would have been impossible without a motorized raft.

The images below are presented in chronological order, following the journey as it unfolded. Some of the highlights include North Canyon with distinctive swirling textures in the rock and sculpted pour-off – I was surprised to see an opaque green pool at its base where on my previous trip a clear reflection pool stood; the vast alcove of Redwall Cavern, estimated by John Wesley Powell to hold 50,000 people; the turquoise waters and travertine terraces of the Little Colorado River as well as the mixing of waters at its confluence with the Colorado River; Shinumo Creek, with its waterfall nestled in a sculpted canyon; Elves Chasm, a lush oasis where a waterfall plunges into an emerald pool beneath hanging gardens; Blacktail Canyon, a narrow slot cut deep into ancient Vishnu Schist that reveals some of the oldest exposed rock on Earth; Deer Creek, where a powerful ribbon of water tumbles from a hidden gorge; Havasu Canyon, a paradise of turquoise streams winding through sheer limestone cliffs; National Canyon, known for its layered narrows and stark transitions between rock types; and Pumpkin Spring, a vividly colored mound of mineral deposits that oozes warm, sulfur-rich water directly into the Colorado River near water-sculpted potholes carved in a surreal swirl of rocks. Besides those known highlights, the campsites themselves revealed unexpected photographic opportunities, both by day and night—sometimes a few steps from the river’s edge, other times reached by climbing to little-used vantage points. In approaching these images, I sought to move beyond familiar views, focusing instead on the canyon’s layered textures, shifting light, and the sensory variations that emerge through movement and time. Rather than depicting the Grand Canyon as a single, fixed landscape, these images aim to evoke the complexity of place as it is experienced from within—a space of constant transformation, where immersion reveals what distance cannot.

Part 2 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/living-the-grand-canyon

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On a photography expedition such as the one I co-led from May 1 to May 11 this year, participants come to capture the Grand Canyon’s awe-inspiring landscape and spend ten days immersed in its depths. But the Grand Canyon, like other national parks, is not just a wilderness. It is also a place of people—those who work, journey through it, and who, in the process, have made it the special protected place that it is today.

A river trip through the Grand Canyon is not just an adventure; it is a shared experience. For ten days, we lived in close proximity, helping each other with the myriad tasks required by life along the river. Once the raft was beached, camera bags, tripods, overnight bags, tents, sleeping kits, mattresses, chairs, tables, and kitchen supplies all had to be unloaded. This was done most efficiently by forming a human chain, passing objects from hand to hand. That was the extent of the work required, as the river guides managed everything else with practiced efficiency. The camaraderie we developed extended beyond our group. Each time our faster motorized raft overtook an oar-powered party, our guides paused to exchange greetings and plans, and participants from both groups waved cheerily. There are no reservations for campsites along the river, but rather than competition, there is collaboration. Our guide, a seasoned professional, considered it poor form to race ahead of oar parties struggling against headwinds just to claim a site. Fortunately, other groups understood that photography goals took us to a specific destination, and with one exception, we always secured our preferred camps.

What makes this journey extraordinary is not only the scenery but the simpler rhythm of life it enables. Unlike remote wildernesses into where cell towers now often reach, the steep canyon walls block all signals. Disconnected from the modern world, we found ourselves immersed in a quieter one. Aside from the fairly quiet hum of the raft’s motor, the only sounds were the roar of the rapids, the splash of the river, and the voices of our companions. No traffic, no alerts, no background noise. Even time itself lost relevance, replaced by a natural cadence shaped by daylight. On such a trip, we do not simply see the canyon—we live and breathe in it.

The day began with a coffee call at 5:30 a.m.—announced by a guide blowing a conch shell, which requires surprising skill to sound properly. After breakfast, we’d break camp, pack our gear, and load the boat while watching for morning light. We were on the river by 8 a.m., typically stopping for hikes and lunch before arriving at our next camp by mid-afternoon. That left time to walk, photograph, or simply sit in the quiet before dinner around 6:30 p.m. The meals, prepared from fresh ingredients, were unexpectedly excellent for a trip in the wilderness. The river-running industry has refined its logistics to an art, including handwashing and dishwashing stations, toilets, and food storage. By 8 p.m., the canyon went dark. Those not venturing out for night photography were happy to retreat into tents under the stars. One night, when I offered instruction at 2 a.m. – because of the near-full moon that set at 4 a.m. – only one participant showed up.

Although nearly five million people visit Grand Canyon National Park each year, about 25,000 raft the Colorado River through the canyon. Of those, over three-quarters are on guided commercial trips such as ours, which was guided by Ed and Finger from Arizona Raft Adventures (AZRA) with the assistance of Doug. Private permits are highly competitive, with fewer than one in fifteen applicants receiving a permit via lottery. Add to that the logistics and whitewater skills required, and it’s clear that such a journey is not easily accessible. That said, a guided trip remains demanding—but manageable. I still lost weight despite eating more than I usually do. Most people can enjoy it: I was the second youngest in our group, and our oldest participant was a 78 year old. Not everybody was in great shape, but we all made it. Despite the high traffic relative to other backcountry rivers, the campsites were remarkably clean—thanks to a strict “carry-it-out” ethic and careful toilet management. The National Park Service enforces tight control over the river corridor: no more than 150 people are permitted on the river each day, and no individual is allowed more than one trip per year.

That scarcity makes the experience even more resonant, especially considering the river’s symbolic weight. Although the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is arguably the most iconic river in the country, it is neither designated as a Wild and Scenic nor part of the Wilderness system. And yet, it played a central role in shaping modern environmentalism. Although relatively few have floated the river, those who have left an outsized mark. In the 1960s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation proposed two dams—one in Marble Canyon, one in Bridge Canyon—that would have flooded parts of the river corridor. Had those dams been built, everything we experienced on our trip—the sound of clear water cascading from hidden grottoes, the quiet glow of sunlight filtering into narrow stone chambers, the long arcs of beach where we woke to birdsong and watched the cliffs catch fire at dusk—would have been submerged or erased. Not just the features of the land, but the entire experience of a living, breathing river would have been drowned beneath still water. The structures were designed to be invisible from the South Rim overlooks to avoid detection by tourists. But the rise of river-running tourism changed the political landscape. Ironically enabled by the controversial Glen Canyon Dam upstream, this growing community of river travelers had come to see the canyon not only from above, but from within. The Grand Canyon was not only its iconic vistas, but the full river stretch between Lee’s Ferry and Lake Mead. River runners formed an alliance with environmentalists. The cornerstone of the successful campaign to stop the dams was the Sierra Club’s 1964 book Time and the River Flowing. Combining François Leydet’s impassioned prose with photographs by Philip Hyde and others, the book argued that the Grand Canyon was not just landscape. It was a living river. The campaign’s success in 1968 was a watershed for the modern environmental movement—proof that public imagination, art, and activism could protect even the most threatened places. The Grand Canyon dam fight was more than a battle over a stretch of river. It was about redefining how Americans value nature—not only as a spectacle, but as an experience. In using photography, publishing, and public engagement to influence policy, that campaign set a template for the environmental movement that continues to this day. Yet it was never just about geography—it was about access, experience, and human connection. That same spirit echoes in the photographs here: people not as intruders in nature, but as participants in its story.

In joining this river trip, we were not only following the water’s path—we were following in the footsteps of those who fought to keep it free. To float between these canyon walls is to understand the stakes of that victory: the stillness, the roar of the rapids, the shared work of living in rhythm with the river. Our presence echoes that earlier generation of photographers, writers, and ordinary citizens who believed that beauty alone was a form of advocacy. In choosing to witness and photograph the canyon from within, we, too, participate in a tradition that has shaped how America understands its wild places—not from above, but from inside them. By turning the camera toward those who share this journey, I hope to underscore that conservation is not just about places—but about how people live in, care for, and remember them. In composing these photographs, I sought to capture both the gestures of daily life and the moments where human scale and the vast geology of the canyon meet — an ongoing dialogue between presence and place. These images are part of my evolving interest in the human presence within natural systems—not as separate from the land, but as shaped by and shaping it in turn.

For me, this journey also marked a return to the origins of my work in public lands. I’ve increasingly turned my lens toward the spaces where nature and human life intersect—not just the untouched, but the entangled. Yet this trip reminded me that even the most celebrated landscapes remain vulnerable, and that their preservation owes much to those who saw experience itself as worthy of protection. To photograph the canyon today is not only to depict a place of grandeur—it is to acknowledge the legacy of those whose images and stories helped save it, and to carry that sensibility into new terrain where the line between wilderness and civilization is no longer so clear.

Part 1 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3

https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/photograph-from-the-coyote-creek-trail-series-honored-at-cpa/

Using the singular URL photography.org, the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) is the second oldest members’ photography gallery space in the country, tracing its roots back to and occupying the original Carmel gallery space of the Friends of Photography, which was launched by Ansel Adams and others in 1967.

Each year, CPA organizes a members’ juried exhibition. Unlike photo competitions judged by photographers with limited credentials, CPA’s calls for entry are juried by gallerists and curators. For the 2025 edition, the juror was Allie Haeusslein, the director of Pier 24 Photography – the largest exhibition space in North America dedicated solely to photography. I was familiar with her name, since she wrote the text for Chris McCaw’s book featured on my contemporary BW landscape photography book list.

I have entered only a handful of photography contests in my life, and the last time I did was more than a decade ago. This time, I was motivated to do so because of the new directions taken by my work. Ann Jastrab, the CPA’s executive director had been generous of her time with me, so the entry fee was a way to support the organization. Since the call is open only to CPA members, I didn’t expect it to be that competitive, but it turned out that more than 2,400 entries were received, for 45 gallery exhibition slots. I was therefore honored that my image titled Home Comforts, from the series Coyote Creek Trail was not only selected, but also won an honorable mention. My national parks nature photographs have been the subject of many solo exhibits on both U.S. coasts and abroad. However, this represents my first win in a contest of significance, and my first exhibit in a fine art photography context. It is never too late to try!

In addition to the 45 photographs exhibited in the gallery, you can also see 45 more photographs selected for online exhibit here. It is a diverse set both in terms of images and in term of process, and for someone used to see mostly travel and nature photography, quite an eye-opener. Several of the works, like the one below, are mixed-media pieces that are not adequately reproduced in 2D. In fact, most of the prints need to be seen in person to fully appreciate.

Artists in attendance, photo courtesy of Ann Jastrab

Home Comforts was included in my initial presentation of the Coyote Creek Trail project, but I am going to show more to provide some context and connections. The image whimsically encapsulates the project by gathering three elements with a luxuriant natural backdrop.

The Mercury News reports that the city is considering reforms to address the thousands of abandoned shopping carts retrieved each year from streets, parks, and waterways—objects officially classified as urban blight. Yet along the Coyote Creek Trail, shopping carts are a basic element of survival, not debris. They function as mobile infrastructure: makeshift wagons that carry everything from firewood, water, and recyclables—redeemable for a modest city payout—to personal belongings and even furniture. In a landscape without storage, where permanence is impossible and displacement frequent, the cart becomes both tool and lifeline, a vehicle for mobility and resilience. Seen this way, these wheeled skeletons of consumer culture speak volumes about the parallel economies and systems of adaptation that flourish at the city’s margins. They are symbols of how people claim space, transport necessity, and build lives in motion.

Many encampments along the trail are furnished with scavenged objects, but none are more poignant than the couch. Each discarded sofa, dragged through brush and bramble, is an attempt to carve out a space of dignity amid the precariousness of life outdoors. In these makeshift living rooms, the boundaries between home and wilderness collapse: plush fabric is bleached by the sun, cushions sag under the weight of rain, and armrests become perches for cats. They are reminders that the desire for comfort and belonging persists even in the most inhospitable conditions. In a region defined by the contrast between extraordinary wealth and visible deprivation, the sight of a couch in a thicket beside a creek makes visible the human urge to create home.

Pets are a quiet but persistent presence along the trail. Many unhoused residents keep dogs for protection and companionship, while others speak of the painful choice not to, knowing they can’t afford to feed another mouth. Most shelters do not allow animals, forcing many into a wrenching decision between safety and staying with a beloved companion. Cats are ubiquitous but eerily skittish—I’ve photographed wild pigs and foxes at closer range. The one in Home Comforts is the closest I’ve ever come. I later learned from a Vietnamese woman who feeds and traps them for neutering that many were abandoned along the Coyote Creek Trail by San Jose residents. Like their human neighbors, they live in the margins, surviving on what others have left behind.

https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/national-park-week-2025-what-were-really-up-against

Each April, National Park Week is a time to celebrate the beauty, history, and spirit of America’s public lands. But in 2025, celebration must be paired with vigilance. The threats facing our national parks and public lands aren’t just abstract — they are deliberate, coordinated, and accelerating beneath the surface. From budget cuts and purges within the National Park Service to secretive rollbacks of national monument protections, we are witnessing an unprecedented unraveling of America’s conservation legacy. This is not just about politics. It’s about the future of public lands as places held in trust for everyone. To meet this moment, the first step is to understand what’s happening — and that is the purpose of this report.

February 3, 2025. Corn Springs, Chuckwalla National Monument, California.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, among that fraction of the electorate aware of the policies outlined by Project 2025, a significant majority opposed them. The Republican presidential candidate distanced himself from that document, saying he had nothing to do with it. By some strange coincidence, as President of the United States, his administration has been aggressively implementing many of its policies, among many others that he did not campaign for. Project 2025 is a 900-page detailed policy blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and supported by a coalition of right-wing organizations. While its ambitions are sweeping and pose a threat considerably more serious than impacts on our public lands, several elements are directly relevant to them. Those core tenets include executive power consolidation, purging the federal workforce, eliminating climate and DEI programs, deregulation and industry empowerment, and privatization of public goods.

Hollowing the National Park Service

In late March, on the sidelines of the Yosemite Conservancy meeting in Yosemite Valley celebrating the organization’s 100th anniversary, I discussed Horsetail’s Firefall (adorned with a distress flag this year) with a long-time resident of the valley. He recalled that for several years, the phenomenon was witnessed by just a few locals who casually commented on the quality of the display of the previous evening. Then groups started to show up and the event grew in popularity. The park service needed to restrict parking and traffic, as well as close off riverside areas to prevent ecological damage. The next step was requiring a reservation 24 hours a day to drive into Yosemite during late February weekends. Visitors do make a great deal of effort to witness a fleeting monument in nature. We both remembered the collective cheers that accompanied the light show and agreed that despite the adverse effects of crowding, it was great to see that people love their parks.

March 21, 2025. Out There screening in Yosemite. Photo by Gabriella Canal

Beyond anecdotes, the data shows that national parks have never been as popular. Since its founding, one of the goals of the National Park Service (NPS) has been to increase its constituency, which helps get the parks more funding and support. Therefore, every year, the NPS proudly publicizes visitation and economic impact numbers. After the momentum loss caused by the pandemic, 2024 broke the visitation record. Yet the NPS directed staff to keep quiet about it. Why?

Could it be because in early 2025, in a matter of a few weeks, the NPS lost 12% of its personnel through mass firings, hiring freezes, and induced early retirements? Two district courts subsequently ruled that the DOGE-initiated firings, indiscriminately citing underperformance despite workers having earned positive reviews, were illegal. Half were re-instated, but that first firing wave was just the beginning. The administration is eyeing a 30% payroll reduction. The Washington Post reported on leaked report mentioning workforce cuts of 25% at the Department of the Interior. Although designed to be less visible to the public by targeting regional offices rather than individual park units, they would devastate programs that support dozens of units.

The NPS was already understaffed. Before the latest cuts, in the last 15 years, NPS staff numbers have decreased by 20%, while visitation has increased by 15%. Besides surging visitation, the issues of deferred maintenance, climate impacts, and growing threats to biodiversity contribute to making the situation a crisis. Together with the staff reductions, the administration terminated leases and proposed reductions to the NPS budget, slashing funding for conservation programs, scientific research, cultural resource protection, and public engagement initiatives. Elon Musk backtracked on DOGE savings goals from $2 trillion to $160 billion. However, he has also wasted $135 billion correcting his mistakes. Watchdog groups can only verify $12.6 billion in savings, which represents 0.17% of the 2025 U.S. federal budget. Countless government services have been lost for basically nothing in return. In particular, the NPS budget request for 2025 was $4.8 billion, while it estimated that park visitors generated $50.3 billion in total economic input. If it doesn’t make sense from an economic point of view to reduce an investment that pays ten-fold, maybe there are other deliberate goals in dismantling the NPS, such as a plan to “deconstruct the administrative state”.

Project 2025 views the agencies, rules, and regulations designed to protect the nation’s citizens as an obstacle. The NPS cuts eliminate institutional resistance, undermine the capacity to protect, and suppress public awareness. The NPS has long harbored a core of career professionals committed to conservation science, cultural integrity, and public service. The 2025 purges are part of a broader effort to replace mission-driven public servants with politically compliant actors. By gutting the agency, the administration is reducing its capacity to act as a steward of protected lands. This paves the way for industry to exploit weaknesses in oversight. The NPS plays a critical role in public education through its interpretive programs, exhibits, and publications. By defunding those efforts, the administration limits the public’s ability to understand what is being lost. The goal is not improved management – it is managed decline, as a prelude to corporate capture. The inevitable impact of the staff reductions is maintenance backlog, reduced park services, and degraded experience for park visitors. Impacts are already felt in dozens of locations. Yosemite National Park is closing backpacker campgrounds. Carlsbad Caverns National Park has suspended all ranger-guided tours, meaning you cannot experience an undeveloped cave (Slaughter Canyon Cave) nor see the most decorated section of Carlsbad Caverns (Kings Palace). Florissant Fossils Bed National Monument is closed two days per week.

In the long term, if the government won’t be able to provide adequate services demanded by visitors, then those services must be subcontracted to private companies – at a higher cost. Project 2025 views public lands not as ecological or cultural commons, but as underutilized real estate. Defunding the NPS effectively repositions parklands for removal from government control and “returning” them to the states. Unlike the federal government, the states have no mandate to keep parklands public. Once they are in private control, they are gone forever. The end goal is not improved management. It is managed decline, followed by corporate capture. We’re watching the deliberate hollowing out of one of the most respected public institutions in the U.S.— not to reform it, but to render it incapable of defending the lands it was created to protect.

Eviscerating National Monuments – Again

In 2017, the administration launched a sweeping “review” of 27 national monuments designated since 1996. Led by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the process was highly controversial—both for its motives and execution. The review targeted monuments for being “too large” or impeding development. It resulted in recommendations to alter the protections of several monuments. Bears Ears was reduced by 85%, and Grand Staircase by nearly half—opening millions of acres to potential mining, drilling, and grazing. Those actions sparked my work on Our National Monuments where I grew attached to those overlooked and less-traveled lands. While the widely publicized but biased “listening tour” that Zinke embarked on hardly featured the voices of environmentalists, scientists, outdoor recreationists, or Indigenous nations, the 2017 review at least included a 60-day public comment period, during which over 2.8 million Americans submitted feedback, with more than 99% favoring continued protection. Though ignored by the administration, the outpouring demonstrated massive public support for national monuments and sparked ongoing litigation and resistance.

Fast-forward eight years. It is now the administration’s second rodeo. They have learned from their first attempts, and this time they have a blueprint with Project 2025. While the 2017 process was widely criticized, it still operated under a veneer of public process. In contrast, the 2025 approach sidesteps accountability entirely, leveraging executive authority to quietly revise or rescind protections without public input. Project 2025’s core objectives include centralizing power in the executive, dismantling environmental protections, erasing climate and equity from public lands policy, and privatization.

A radical element of Project 2025 is its proposal to consolidate federal power under the presidency, reducing the independence of federal agencies and civil servants. The secretive nature of the 2025 monument review—no public comment period, no consultation, no transparency—is consistent with this move. Decisions are made top-down, bypassing norms of democratic engagement and scientific review. In February 2025, my inbox was filled with alerts from various conservation organizations about a new “review” of national monuments. When I read Order No 3418 “Unleashing American Energy” issued on Feb 4, 2025 by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum with a 15-day deadline and the accompanying press release, I was surprised not to find the words “national monument” in the 7-page document. Yet, the conservation organizations had parsed it accurately when they denounced it as a renewed attack on our national monuments. Order No 3418 directs Department of the Interior (DOI) staff:

to review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn public lands, consistent with existing law, including 54 U.S.C. 320301 and 43 U.S.C. 1714.

To the general public, those numbers do not mean anything, but it turns out that 54 U.S.C. 320301 is the law that gives U.S. presidents the power to designate national monuments.

Project 2025 calls for the gutting of environmental regulations. The quietly planned rollback of national monument protections in 2025 is a direct application of that goal—removing conservation designations that limit energy extraction, mining, grazing, and development (43 U.S.C. 1714 is the law that gives U.S. presidents the power to ban new mining and drilling). Project 2025 treats ideas of Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, biodiversity, and climate change resilience as obstacles. Many recent national monument proclamations from President Obama and President Biden were based on those ideas. Project 2025 envisions a future where government agencies become vehicles for private-sector profit, especially in energy and land use. Reducing monument protections removes barriers for oil, gas, and mining interests—many of whom are donors or allies to Project 2025 architects. It’s about freeing up public lands for private industry, a central tenet of the Project 2025 agenda.

In 2017, the list of national monuments targeted was well publicized and became the blueprint for Our National Monuments. So what are the monuments targeted this time? President Biden’s final proclamations were Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments in California. Located between Joshua Tree National Park and the Salton Sea, Chuckwalla National Monument safeguards 627,000 acres of California’s Colorado Desert, completing the largest continuous spread of protected lands in the lower 48 states, now known as the Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor. The monument is almost as large as Joshua Tree National Park, but as is often the case with BLM lands, to explore it fully requires a 4WD vehicle. One of its most accessible areas is the Corn Springs area, whose photos illustrate this section. Even though, after driving a rough road, the skid plate of the Prius got loose and we needed to go back to town to find a car lift to fix it. I thought it was a smart move to establish those new parklands in a state where they enjoy wide popular and political support – as opposed to Utah where they enjoy only popular support. However, I didn’t take into account the current president’s obsession with undoing his predecessor’s legacy – even when it makes no sense whatsoever. In Mid-March, it appeared that he was poised to rescind protections for the two new California national monuments, but like the rest of the process, there was much uncertainty, backtracking, and little transparency. Earlier this week, Public Domain got the scoop that the leaked DOI 2026-2030 Strategic Plan Draft Framework includes “assess and right-size monuments” and “return heritage lands and sites to the states”, but was short on specifics. Another scoop from the Washington Post includes this:

Interior Department aides are looking at whether to scale back at least six national monuments, these individuals said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no final decisions had been made. The list, they added, includes Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

All of this is done in the name of energy emergency, that justifies insanely compressing the once multi-year EIS environmental review process to 28 days. However, the U.S. as the largest petroleum producer in the world and a net exporter, is pumping more crude than at any time in history. Natural gas, coal, and lithium supply far outpace demand. The real agenda isn’t about meeting urgent energy needs—it’s about seizing a political opportunity to gut environmental safeguards and privatize public resources under the guise of crisis. National monuments, many of which were designated to protect culturally and ecologically sensitive lands, are being rebranded as “obstacles” to growth. What’s being framed as necessity is, in fact, ideology: a drive to dismantle public land protections for the benefit of extractive industries and political donors.

The public may not even know it’s happening until it’s too late. This calculated opacity is a feature, not a bug: it prevents organized resistance, media coverage, or meaningful public debate. As someone who spent years photographing the national monuments, I can say with confidence: these lands are not “wasted” because they aren’t being mined or drilled. They are vital places of beauty, heritage, refuge, and scientific value. They were designated after rigorous review and with overwhelming public support. Rolling back their protections without any meaningful engagement, is a direct attack on the principle that public lands belong to the people. The tragedy here is not just the potential loss of protections. It’s the erosion of public trust in how our shared heritage is governed. When democratic processes are subverted, and transparency is replaced by executive fiat, we don’t just lose landscapes—we lose the idea that those landscapes belong to all of us.

What We Can Do

We need to be clear-eyed: this is not just about politics or partisanship. It’s about defending the future of public lands. The attacks on the National Park Service and national monuments are calculated, systemic, and designed to fly under the radar. But if they succeed, the consequences will be irreversible. Last week, Interior Secretary Burgum gave DOGE operative Tyler Hassen, a former oil executive, full control of the department’s organization and staffing, which could be interpreted as effectively putting Elon Musk’s DOGE in charge of America’s public lands. What could go wrong?

April 19, 2025. St James Park, San Jose, California.

Participate in protests. Momentum has been gathered by 50501, a grassroots movement which has mobilized millions without any budget, centralized structure, or official backing. Support citizen groups who track these developments, in particular Resistance Rangers (NPS inside voice, whistleblower culture) and the Conservation Lands Foundation (grassroots coalition builder, defender of BLM lands). Legal action will be an effective way to block policies, a focus of Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity. Contact elected officials, using the digital tools of big legacy organizations such as NPCA Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, or directly via 5 Calls. Share what’s happening with those who care about nature, democracy, and equity—even if they don’t usually follow public lands policy, just like I did with you. Above all, refuse to normalize the dismantling of a century-old conservation legacy. Public lands were created because people fought for them. That fight isn’t over. It is escalating into a new, more dangerous phase. Let’s not look back on this moment with regret. Let’s meet it with resolve.

https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/twelve-contemporary-black-and-white-landscape-photography-books

Part 3 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3

This third and last of my selection of black-and-white landscape photography books focuses on contemporary work by living photographers with a strong presence in the art world, ending with artists younger than me. The books engage with the land as a dynamic space shaped by history, time, and elemental forces. They are all part of my collection and personal favorites. Not only have I thematically paired them like in the previous selection, but I have grouped the pairs to illustrate recurring motifs in contemporary landscape photography. The land may be viewed through the lens of human intervention, revealing the traces of civilization through subtle or overt marks. Some turn to the raw, elemental, untamed aspects of nature, capturing its turbulence and ephemerality, while others reduce the landscape to near abstraction, stripping away reference points to evoke a more visceral, psychological experience. This selection is quite representative of contemporary landscape photography, and even if those approaches are alien to you, there is much to be learned from studying the visual strategies at play.

What makes these works distinctly contemporary is their departure from traditional landscape photography’s conventions of clarity and beauty, which was a common thread in the previous list. Instead, they embrace fragmentation, process-based experimentation, repetition, and an awareness of photography’s role in shaping our perception of place. Whether through sequences that challenge linear storytelling, alternative photographic techniques that embed time within the image, or unusual compositions that blur the boundary between representation and abstraction, in the work of those photographers the landscape is both a physical reality and a conceptual space. They invite reconsidering how we see, inhabit, and interpret the land today.

Robert Adams: Listening to the River (1994)

Robert Adams (born 1937), is influential for his unflinching and stark depictions of the evolving landscape of the American West, revealing both its beauty and the impact of human encroachment. Of the ten photographers in the “New Topographics” exhibit which could be argued to be the starting point of contemporary landscape photography, he is the most sensitive to the natural world. Some of his most influential books such as The New West depict developments, but Listening to the River takes place in the anonymous, workday landscapes of the American West, conveying a sense of place through straightforward and unembellished images of rural environments. The book is distinguished by its innovative use of sequences from two to seven images on each spread following multiple strategies. They create a sense of being around and moving in the landscape through a contemplative journey that explores with a poetic sensibility the fragile balance between nature and human presence.

John Gossage: The Pond (2010 reprint)

John Gossage (born 1946) explores the urban and suburban landscape in subtle and psychologically charged photographs that reveal their overlooked and ambiguous aspects. Although a prolific bookmaker with over thirty publications, it is his second monograph that became one of the most seminal and groundbreaking books in photographic literature, even though Gossage stated that in 1985, they couldn’t give the book away. Nowadays it is trendy for photobooks not to have a photograph on their cover, that was groundbreaking then – the reprint reverses the colors. The Pond chronicles a walk to and away from a pond in an unremarkable stretch of land at the interface of the city and the country, a then-new territory many have explored since – and has become my most recent focus. There is a fondness for the natural world as a place of redemption or loss. Yet, the images stay away from celebrating beauty. Instead, they experiment with photographic seeing, maintaining an ambiguous tone that leaves interpretation to the viewer, yet another hallmark of contemporary photography.

Mark Klett: Revealing Territory (1992)

Mark Klett (born 1952) explores time and history through conceptual landscape photographs of the American West. He is mostly known for his pioneering contributions to rephotography – the practice of creating a contemporary image that perfectly aligns with a historical image – and for extensions to the methodology. My favorite of his several rephotography books is Yosemite in Time (2005). Besides the dialog with significant images from past photographic giants and the connection established between them, the rigorous technique yields insights into environmental changes. However, the book does not fit this list because some photographs use color. Instead, in the more personal Revealing Territory, Klett uses 4×5 Polaroid Type 55 film (also one of my favorites until it was discontinued in the early 2000s) and embraces the materiality of that process through its edge markings and the addition of handwritten captions to the prints. This approach lends the images a sense of immediacy and direct engagement with the landscape, blurring the line between photography as documentation and as an artifact of experience. The book presents a multifaceted portrait of the Western landscape, incorporating images that range from expansive desert vistas to human interventions, underscoring Klett’s interest in the evidence people have left of their experience of the land.

Mark Ruwedel – Westward the Course of Empire (2008)

Mark Ruwedel (born 1954) blends historical inquiry with contemporary concerns about land use in America. Based on extensive research, Westward the Course of Empire traces the remnants of abandoned railroad lines that once symbolized the expansionist ambitions of the 19th century. The book is a typology of these forgotten paths through the land, revealing the scars left by human industry and the slow reclamation of the land. Ruwedel’s restrained, methodical compositions and rich black-and-white tonality underscore the transience of human endeavor, making this a powerful meditation on history, landscape, and the passage of time.

Hiroshi Sugimoto – Seascapes (2015) (*)

Hiroshi Sugimoto (born 1948) is one of the most important conceptual photographers of our time. Photographed on an 8×10 camera like his other projects, Seascapes may be his most radical project, as it presents an austere and profound vision of the ocean that pushes minimalism to its extreme. Each image follows the same compositional structure, dividing the frame equally between sea and sky. The world is reduced to a simple horizon, excluding other elements such as clouds or rocks, and long exposures dissolve surface detail, transforming waves into ethereal, time-suspended expanses. The repetition and subtle variation in atmospheric conditions and light evoke a sense of eternity and stillness, as the scenes could have been witnessed by the earliest humans. (*) Photographed over several decades at locations around the world, Seascapes comprises over 200 photographs. When the book was published, I thought it was too many and passed. The book sold out and became prohibitively expensive, so I had to content myself with a catalog presenting a representative sample of the series among others, the 400-page Hiroshi Sugimoto (2010). The cover is pictured above, and it differs only slightly from the cover of Seascapes. That book is itself out of print, but the recent and shorter Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine (2023) by the same publisher is readily available.

Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World’s Edge (2019)

Thomas Joshua Cooper (born 1946) opus magnum project maps the limits of human exploration through images photographed on six continents over a quarter-century. Using exclusively a 5×7 Agfa Ansco camera made in 1898, Cooper makes only one exposure per place. His work, often created under extreme conditions and through extended expeditions to remote places, captures coastal edges and historical waypoints. Although they are about human exploration, mythology, and history, they are devoid of any human traces. Long exposures and abstract compositions generally excluding the horizon transform seascapes and landscapes into mythical spaces of emptiness. A pitch-black photograph taken at the South Pole on winter solstice contrasts with a whiteout near the North Pole. The sequencing follows a journey, leading the viewer through an atlas of seascapes that act as timeless, metaphysical places.

Jungjin Lee: Wind (2009)

Jungjin Lee (born 1961) fuses Eastern aesthetics and Western landscape traditions, creating textural and graphic images that transcend documentary representation, even when made in well-trodden nature locations. Wind, maybe her best-known book, studies one of the elemental forces that shape the land, capturing the movement of air, sand, and light in vast, open spaces. Printed on handmade and hand-coated paper, the images take on a textured, tactile, painterly quality, reinforcing their ephemeral yet grounded presence. The book’s sequence flows like shifting currents, immersing the viewer in an environment that feels both ancient and impermanent, emphasizing the dreamlike dimensions of the landscape.

Mitch Dobrowner – Storms (2013)

Mitch Dobrowner (born 1956) pushes Ansel Adams’s esthetics further, creating eloquently dramatic black-and-white landscape images using digital photography. Storms is about the skies, capturing the raw power and sublime beauty of nature’s most volatile moments. Bringing fine-art photography esthetic to storm chasing, the book presents a series of monumental, highly detailed photographs of supercells, tornadoes, and other severe weather phenomena, emphasizing their sculptural, almost supernatural presence. The sequencing builds tension, moving from distant formations to explosive moments of energy and destruction. Dobrowner’s precise compositions and deep tonal contrasts highlight the delicate balance between chaos and order, offering a cinematic portrayal of nature’s elemental forces.

Sally Mann – Deep South (2008)

Sally Mann (born 1951) has photographed in the American South since the 1970s with large-format cameras, exploring themes of memory and the deep resonance of place. Although she came to prominence with her silver-gelatin intimate portraits of her family, she subsequently turned to evocative and romantic landscape work using antique processes. Deep South is a poetic and atmospheric meditation on the landscapes of the American South, infused with a sense of loss and historical weight. Using a wet-plate collodion process that introduces imperfections and a quality that almost seems like a hybrid of photography, painting, and sculpture, Mann renders the landscape as tangible and spectral. The book’s elegiac tone invites viewers to experience the landscape as a site of memory, where past and present remain inextricably intertwined.

Chris McCaw – Sunburn (2012)

Chris McCaw (born 1971) is known for his unique process refined over time, in which he directly exposes photographic paper to the sun in hand-built ultra-large format cameras. The intense exposures, often taking hours or even days, result in an inversion of tonalities aptly called solarization, giving the images a unique, almost abstract quality. Sunburn, which represents the foundation of his imaginative subsequent work with the sun, captures the passage of time in a literal sense: the sun’s rays etch themselves into the emulsion while smoke comes out of the camera with a faint smell of roasted marshmallows as the gelatin of the paper is burned. The charred, sculptural, one-of-a-kind prints emphasize the raw interaction between photography and nature.

Ron Jude – 12 Hz (2020)

Ron Jude (born 1965) explores themes of memory, identity, and place through understated, conceptual photographs. 12 Hz departs from his previous color work where the landscape is a storytelling component, and also from the West Coast landscape photography tradition. Presenting a dark, primordial vision of the Earth, Jude digitally captures highly detailed and often claustrophobic, abstract images of rock formations, turbulent waters, and geological remnants that exist beyond human time scales. Those images almost entirely devoid of life are contrasted with equally claustrophobic chaotic forest floors printed on thiner paper. The book’s title references ultra-low frequency vibrations associated with seismic activity, reinforcing its focus on landscapes shaped by forces beyond perception, where human presence is insignificant.

Awoiska van der Molen – Sequester (2014)

Awoiska van der Molen (born 1972) is a rare contemporary photographer whose practice until recently was only in the natural world. Her monumental and often dark and abstract silver-gelatin landscape prints are intensely psychological, conveying solitude, silence, and an emotional connection to the land. Although photographed entirely in the Canary Islands during solitary sessions, Sequester is not about place. The image titles, consisting of only numbers, have no place names in them. The book is about mood and being there. Composition is less important than the alternance of light and shade. The images, made with long exposures in low light, presented one of the greatest challenges to reproduce in a book. They are black-and-white photographs with varying degrees of abstraction, often erasing any sense of the physical scale in front of the camera. Many feature a limited tonal range, from the deepest blacks to dark grays. The designer, Hans Gremmen, has done a brilliant job in translating the work within the constraints of a book, alternating regular pages printed on white paper with black pages onto which sections of the images are printed in full bleed with silver ink. This creates a striking, immersive experience faithful to a work defined by introspection that goes beyond mere representation to emphasize emotions and feelings.

Part 3 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/two-arches-in-joshua-tree-national-park

Natural rock arches are rare in California’s deserts compared to places like Utah because of differences in geology and climate. Most natural arches form in soft sandstone, but California’s desert regions have mostly harder granite, metamorphic, or volcanic rocks. Freeze-thaw cycles and sustained water flows are less frequent than on the Colorado Plateau. Yet a few arches can be found in the Alabama Hills, Death Valley National Park, and Joshua Tree National Park.

Photographing Arch Rock

Joshua Tree National Park’s largest natural arch is a 25-foot Arch Rock near the White Tanks Campground. Back in 2013, when I last visited Arch Rock, the formation was already well-known enough to be mentioned in the two most popular national park guides at that time. Yet, none of the people I talked to were aware of the arch, and in each of my visits, I encountered only a few other people on the trail. This is even though it was a short half-a-mile loop, called the Arch Rock Nature Trail. As the trail winds through granite boulders, the arch remains hidden until the last minute. If you were not looking for it, you could easily miss it, as you have to squeeze through boulders on the south side of the trail.

Such a small subject offers so many possibilities. You can crawl through the arch and photograph both sides, which have distinct characters. The shape of the opening varies dramatically with the viewpoint, so it pays to explore around. Several compositions are possible including the entire rock or framing the opening more tightly. I find the west side from which one comes the more impressive. It is directly lit in the afternoon, but backlight also works well, especially with a sun star.

I returned at night and illuminated the arch with a camping lantern. In the opening image, I used the same lantern but added a color accent with the red light from my headlamp to the second image. I processed it with a warmer balance than the image below. Given that at day, visitors were infrequent, I was surprised that photographers showed up shortly thereafter. Even in the dark, this place was no longer just my own.

The Changing Experience of Arch Rock

By 2025, the Arch Rock had become known enough that my brother-in-law had placed it on his list. I relied on the notes in Treasured Lands, which say to start the trail in the White Tank Campground, opposite Campsite 9. Driving on the Pinto Basin Road from the north, I noticed a sign pointing to a parking area marked “Arch Rock Trail” towards the west side of the road, half a mile before the White Tanks Campground entrance. It made no sense to me since I remembered that Arch Rock, like the White Tanks Campground, is located on the east side of the road. At the entrance of the campground, we were surprised to see a sign prohibiting parking in the campground. Instead, we parked at a shoulder down the road and after walking into the campground, found the trailhead exactly as indicated in the book. However, on the nature trail, I was confused by several intersecting other trails that I did not remember. We suddenly found ourselves amid a steady stream of visitors. The sense of solitude I had once found here was gone. What had once been a quiet, somewhat overlooked corner of the park removed from the areas with larger rock piles and Joshua trees had become a well-trodden destination, a shift not just in its popularity, but in how one experiences nature.

I realized the other visitors had parked at the trailhead established in the interleaving decade. The small parking area inside the campground near Campsite 9 would not accommodate the crowd we saw, therefore the National Park Service directed day hikers to the Twin Tanks Parking Lot we previously saw. From there, the arch is 1.4 miles round-trip, instead of the 0.5 miles round-trip from the campground. I’ll have to make an update for the 10th printing of Treasured Lands.

Since it had been twelve years, I thought we’d follow the crowds even when we saw a sign pointing to “Heart Rock”. Visitors were lined up to have their picture taken with the aptly named rock. We looked around in the surrounding nook and crates for Arch Rock without success before backtracking to the previous trail intersection, from which we caught the older nature trail and located the arch. Including our group, there were dozens there, and we quickly took a group picture to leave the place to others. Needless to say, I did not attempt to photograph the arch. This was a different wilderness experience—one shaped not just by the landscape.

Seeking Solitude at Scorpius Arch

Although these days, my photography is no longer focused on national parks, I keep an intense interest in finding new experiences and places in them. The next day, Lanchi and I went looking for Scorpius Arch. Southern California photographer Chip Morton had named the little-known formation that way because when he captured night photographs of the arch in 2016, the constellation of Scorpio loomed above, while a scorpion was hanging out. The name suggested a fleeting intersection of the cosmic and the terrestrial, an alignment of time, place, and presence. Although the arch provided a marker for the visit, I was mostly curious to see an area of the park I had overlooked before.

The experience of visiting Scorpius Arch couldn’t be more different from Arch Rock. From the Joshua Tree National Park North Entrance Station, we drove about 40 miles along the mostly straight and deserted highway that forms the park’s boundary before stopping our Prius near a San Bernardino County roadside call box (62-712) in the middle of nowhere. The area, part of the vast Joshua Tree Wilderness, is undeveloped and has no trails, but walking across the desert along the flat wash plain was easy and rewarded with a close look at vegetation I had not noticed in the desert before, such as the curiously textured California Dodder, a parasitic plant consisting of a bunch of orange vines twisted like spaghetti.

Unlike Arch Rock, which is tucked around other tall boulders, Scorpius Arch rises directly above desert flats, facing the north – making it possible to photograph the Milky Way overhead. If you know what to look for, you can easily spot it from the highway, with a perspective comparable to the photograph above. Morton’s trip report makes it sound like quite an adventure, but if you hike straight to the arch, it is only a fifteen-minute walk.

It would be a pity, however, to only do a quick round-trip to the arch. As is almost always the case, the journey is more interesting than the destination. I wished it would have taken me more wandering before finding the arch – like Morton did. Afterward, we scrambled on the piles of boulders to survey the landscape. We spotted several formations that seemed on the verge of transformation, narrow gaps, and half-formed windows where erosion had nearly, but not quite, carved its way through, except for another tiny arch. Jagged heaps of weathered granite, stacked stories high, took on the eerie resemblance of colossal animal skulls, their hollowed-out depressions like vacant, staring eyes. We found a formation similar to the famous Skull Rock but without several dozen visitors around. In fact, for the entire duration of our visit, we didn’t see anybody, even in the distance. It was a stark contrast to the experience at Arch Rock—two versions of the desert, one shaped by access and popularity, the other by silence and obscurity. That is for the better, as I noticed patches of fragile cryptobiotic soil, common in Utah deserts, but rare in the California deserts. If you visit the area, please stick to sandy areas and rocks!

In the evolving dialogue between people and the land, these arches—both celebrated and obscure—become markers of changing relationships with the wild. Once a space of solitude and personal discovery, the landscape is increasingly mediated by infrastructure, social expectation, and digital circulation. The act of seeking an arch is no longer just an encounter with erosion and form but a negotiation between presence and absence. Once remote formations become destinations, their solitude is replaced by the weight of human attention. Where an arch might have once stood as a quiet anomaly of erosion, discovered only through wandering, it is now mapped, named, and indexed—its existence mediated through guidebooks, GPS coordinates, and social media posts. The untouched becomes inscribed, no longer just a geological curiosity but a site of expectation, shaped as much by human desire as by natural forces. Yet, in less-trafficked spaces, the experience remains ephemeral, the landscape still resisting categorization, offering a fleeting sense of discovery before it, too, is drawn into the network of known places. Within these spaces, the tension between accessibility and retreat plays out in real-time, revealing not only the physical transformations of the land but the shifting frameworks through which we construct wilderness itself.

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/coyote-creek-trail-project

After spending a quarter-century photographing the vast, iconic landscapes of America’s national parks, I turned my attention to the landscapes of my own city, San Jose, California. This shift in my practice mirrors an evolution in environmental thought: from conserving distant wilderness to embracing an inclusive ecology that acknowledges the complex, intertwined relationship between human life and the natural world.

Within walking distance of my home, the Coyote Creek Trail—a paved recreational path bordered by a narrow strip of nature—weaves through the suburbs and between developments for twenty miles. Neither remote nor pristine, the trail is not a destination for awe. Yet, through sustained attention, its fragile beauty emerges, awakening a sense of wonder for the wildness in our own backyard. Over a decade of returning to this trail, I’ve become attuned to its changes over time—seasonal rhythms, wildlife patterns, and the cycles of drought and flood that shape Coyote Creek.

These changes also include the transient human presence along the trail. The creek’s watershed has been shaped by dams and engineering, and for many years, it was home to the largest homeless encampment in America. Though the Jungle has been cleared, makeshift shelters continue to appear and disappear with little notice. For some, the trail is a place to pass through; for others, it is a home in the most literal sense. The fleeting nature of these camps, and the lives that inhabit them, mirrors the ephemerality of the landscape itself.

This work is a meditation on a place where the boundaries between the wild and the human blur, capturing both natural beauty and the human stories embedded in the landscape. In the hope of inspiring an appreciation for even the smallest patches of wildness in our midst, I aim to evoke the wonder that can be found in the overlooked, moving beyond the distant and untouched to embrace the lived-in, the intervened-upon, and the local. In the Coyote Creek Trail, I have found a place that reflects universal themes of transformation—of nature, of people, and of how we understand our complex place within the land.

California faces a severe homelessness crisis fueled by high housing costs and a chronic shortage of affordable housing. The state has the highest percentage of unsheltered homeless people in the nation, with two-thirds living on the streets, in encampments, or in their cars. In San Jose, one of the wealthiest cities in the world, thousands of unhoused residents live along waterways like Coyote Creek. Once home to The Jungle, the nation’s largest encampment until its 2014 closure, the creek remains a fragile sanctuary for the unhoused, despite ongoing efforts to displace them.

Since 2014, I have visited the Coyote Creek Trail well over a hundred times, initially drawn to its natural beauty. Over the past two years, my work has also focused on the creek’s residents, particularly along the 12-mile stretch slated for clearing beginning in January 2025. Local policies, bolstered by the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Grants Pass v. Johnson allowing cities to clear encampments without shelter alternatives, have intensified efforts to displace these communities. The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board has mandated that San Jose remove encampments from sensitive areas by June 2025, threatening steep fines for noncompliance. Meanwhile, the Santa Clara Valley Water agency has banned camping along 295 miles of creeks, further narrowing the options for those who call the creek home.

A significant part of this project documents this pivotal moment through intimate portraits and environmental imagery, focusing on the lives of individuals within the targeted area. The work reveals resilience, community, and vulnerability amidst systemic upheaval, juxtaposing personal stories with the broader forces reshaping their lives. It exposes the human cost of policies that prioritize environmental restoration while neglecting the root causes of homelessness. Offered an unflinching look at life on the margins, viewers are challenged to confront the stark inequalities in one of the world’s most prosperous regions and to consider urgent questions about compassion, justice, and the moral imperative to protect both people and the environment.