Painted Desert

Photo series and artist book are the result of an extensive research into natural and civilisational structures around the American Southwest. Acting as a counterpart to the 3-channel Videoinstallation Land of Enchantment (2017) – a dystopian pictoral panorama that investigates the area around the Trinity Site in New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was detonated in July 1945 – the images lead along various buildings embedded in the landscape. Contrasting images of colourful rock formations and sands with architecture and human interventions, the series points at a possible coexistence of the desert and civilisation. Rather than upholding the cliché of the desert as a tabula rasa, as a non-historical, uninhabitable place, it instead celebrates its history and diversity. Among the portrayed buildings are the University of Arizona in Tuscon, the Painted Desert Community Complex by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander, the Pueblo ruins at Chaco Canyon, the residential North Encanto district in Phoenix and Paolo Soleri’s experimental town Arcosanti.