Blog Author Richard Newman

Open Image

I used to like to wander in the desert. When I lived in Southern California, it was pretty easy to get up at 2 or 3:00am, get out of town and into the desert. I was working in the film industry at the time and it was very demanding, so I needed this time just to clear my head.

At first I went to the typical places: Death Valley, Joshua Tree and Kelso. The landscape was great and inspiring, but the pictures I was making were traditional landscapes: they were pretty, had emotion and perfect printing. I loved them, but knew deep down inside that there was something better for me down the road. So, down the road I went.

I used to drive to Las Vegas a lot. It was almost faster than flying and I had a car when I was there. I stopped going on I-15, I started taking side roads, and that’s when magic started to happen. There aren’t a lot of connecting roads between the Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but I eventually drove on every one of them. In between the 50-60-mile stretches where there was mostly nothing, but occasionally a little settlement would pop up. Sometimes there were inhabitants of sun-bleached people that liked the 115°- average temperatures in the summer. These were great portrait opportunities and I took advantage of those that were cooperative.

Then I started to find the abandoned places—some on the road and some down five miles of gravel if it looked interesting—that I stopped at and found the magic. There was a lot of rubble, mattresses that had been outside for years, some broken chairs and piles of papers. Once I dug into a pile of papers and found a box labeled “Pictures Fragile.” I felt like the sun was only shining on me at that moment. Life is fragile, our emotions are fragile, but pictures? Of course! When I opened the box, which had taken some abuse, it was empty. Fragile indeed! I also found a high school yearbook from the 60s and from a burn pile next to it. I had no idea what I had stumbled upon but I took the artifacts and still have them today. I wonder about the images, the people and what happened there?




That day, and that find, changed my photography. I realized that I needed to be connected to my subjects in very personal ways. I knew at that moment that even though very few others would recognize the value in what I had found, to me I was already building a bank on it. I came to know that, no matter the subject matter, if you love what you are doing and love what you are creating, the world be damned, you’ve found success.

I need to go back and find that spot again. Who knows what’s changed.