Becoming California, Series One,   Thirty pigment prints, pigment inks on 100% rag paper: each 23” x 60” or 14” x 36”

2. Becoming California, 2021-2022.

"It lies at the edge of the water, rising like a wall, gazing moodily over the same ocean, towards China and the other side of the world.  And back of the wall there are the deep canyons, the tall pines, and the hillside of brush in the mysterious glare of noontime.  What does it mean?  How can a thing be so wild that is so full of life and charming variety, of young trees and deer grazing in the gay clearings, of that chatter of bluejays, and the red trunks of the madronyos.  And yet it is so wild in there that you cry with the loneliness of it.  You feel a creeping panic in your heart.  Perhaps it is because we are civilized and do not understand these things.  We have other gods, and we can no longer pray to the tree."

Jaime de Angulo, "The Lariat" 1927, reprinted in A Jaime de Angulo Reader, Bob Callahan, editor. 1979.

I moved to California in 1973 after I had been accepted into the Graduate program in Photography at San Francisco State University and lived in a tiny apartment in Berkeley.  In addition to my regular coursework I immersed myself in three overlapping areas of research.  The first was Buddhist thought and tradition initially inspired by the artwork of John Cage and the photographer Minor White. The second concept, often labeled "The First Mind," was a cross disciplinary pursuit in art and science that explored the beginnings of human consciousness and the formation of image making and language. The third was my direct and profound experience of walking and photographing the California landscape.

Becoming California, contains only those books that were significant in shaping my first years in California that still remain in my possession and it is composed of two series of photographs, each with solitary books floating horizontally surrounded by black space.  In the first series a single book is shown flat on its side with the front edge of its pages and covers facing the camera.  The proportions of the black space relative to the size and placement of the book in the frame was critical because it was not only a place for the book to exist but it was visually a co-equal subject that defined scale and balance.  The lighting on the books was constructed so it appeared as if it were emanating from within the book itself.  Most of the volumes in this first series are paperbacks and display deterioration, discoloration and occasional evidence of extreme use. Many were carried with me every day as well as on my long hikes in the landscape.

The second series features larger, usually hard bound books lying flat with their open pages resembling scale landscapes that reference the rolling hills, mountains and valleys of California. While usually made of better material and binding than the paperback books, they still reveal details of aging and use. All of these books were photographed using a landscape panorama technique I adapted for still life photography.  The camera was mounted on a set of rails that precisely stabilized its position as I incrementally moved it parallel to the book while making a series of exposures.  Afterwards I used image processing software to combine the separate files into a single high resolution image.   Although the system was complex, the end result was a digital file with tremendous sharpness and detail that could make large scale, hyper-realistic photographic prints.

Detail: 1. Turtle Island, Gary Snyder.