“Another California” featured in INSITE Journal_08. Fall 2026.
In returning to photographs I had made years ago at the Salton Sea, my thoughts drifting to “Erratic Fields” and our conversations during the fall 2023 expedition to Punta Mazo Nature Reserve, birds and bodies of water began to surface as a quiet interconnected current running beneath the work. Were these birds always there? Where are they headed?
The rediscovery of birds hidden in plain view and water as persistent visual elements reframed the archive of imagery, opening the door to another system of relations. Sights that I had been interested in for my research and creative practice became new again under the light of this perspective shift. Locales that had appeared along the horizon while on route to iconic vistas and historical sites, such as a seemingly random park, an isolated wetland, or an undeveloped tract of land, now bear the weight of histories, of journeys, of connections that I was not attuned to. What else had slipped past my vision while I was fixated on particular vantage points and iconographies?