Sand Into Sky

White Sands is a place of visions. From a distance it is a shimmering mirage, a tracery of incongruously pure white upon the landscape. Up close, among the surrounding sands, the mystery only deepens. No matter how close one looks, the landscape remains essentially featureless. This lack of detail is disorienting; the eye cannot focus on a void. In full sunlight, the pure gypsum is so bright that one looks in vain for shadows to shape the scene. In the soft light of twilight, the distinction between sand and sky may disappear altogether.

One must be careful here. As the gaze moves from sand to sky, near to far, past to present, it is easy to become disoriented, displaced, irretrievably lost. You may turn around and find that the wind has already erased your footprints.

Date: December 31, 1988
Time: just after sunset
Location: White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
Camera: Canon AE-1 35mm SLR
Film: Kodak Kodachrome 64 slide
Focal length: 50mm
Aperture: unrecorded
Exposure Time: unrecorded
Scanner: Nikon Coolscan LS-2000