My primary interest is in documenting humanity’s impact on the world — both the intersection of nature and industry, and the narratives of the people living at those crossroads. Generally, the images are constructed “in camera,” including only the elements present at the moment of capture.
Much of my focus is on the remnants and future of human activity across the deserts of the American West. Images of these parched lands are part of America’s cultural DNA — icons of great hope and ambition. Against these grand ideals exists a patchwork of struggling communities, dreamers, dropouts, and military-industrial compounds scattered across vast open spaces. These photographs explore how the “window” functions as not only a literal/architectural, but also as an optical/aesthetic and narrative/symbolic structure in framing the story of our desert landscapes.
— Osceola Refetoff, Los Angeles
