Published by Radius Books. Text by Raphael Pumpelly.
Much of Mark Klett's (born 1952) work as a photographer has entailed conversations with historical images. For this project, Klett worked only with the account of a young mining engineer named Raphael Pumpelly who wrote of his perilous journey through Arizona and Mexico in 1861 on the lawless Camino del Diablo or "road of the devil." More than 150 years later, Klett traversed the same route, making photographs in response to Pumpelly's words. Today, most of the Camino is located on the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range and the border is a militarized zone patrolled by government agents and crisscrossed by air and ground forces practicing for war. Unable to trace the engineer's exact steps, Klett created images that are not literal references to specific places or events; rather, he sought to produce a more poetic narrative of their shared experience of the Arizona desert.
Published by Radius Books. Text by William L. Fox.
There is a twisted steel dome in Hiroshima that stands as a grim reminder of the city's destruction by the first atomic bomb. Halfway around the globe, on the border of Utah and Nevada, stands another ruin. The site that housed the bomber that carried “Little Boy,” Wendover Army Air Base, now crumbles from neglect. The stories and relics of Wendover describe more than just the past; they point to a historic cycle, a present increasingly filled with new threats of devastating nuclear and chemical warfare. For this book, American photographer Mark Klett (born 1952) has teamed up with William L. Fox, a celebrated science and art writer whose work focuses on human cognition and memory. Together, the two have created a fascinating visual and textual portrait of Wendover Army Air Base, examining the experience of memory in relation to the great tragedy of America's atomic age.
Published by Radius Books. Text by Gregory McNamee.
Mark Klett has been photographing the deserts of the American West, in particular the beauties of the Sonoran landscape--a desert that sprawls across southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Along with coyotes and tumbleweeds, saguaro cacti are one of the most recognizable (and stereotypical) features of this region. Klett's portraits of these giant desert plants are straightforward and frontal. Klett is known for teasing out the implications of man's presence in the environment: here, vital young saguaros, middle-aged contenders with gunshot wounds and wizened elders are treated as worthy inhabitants. This beautifully produced volume, featuring 40 deluxe tritone images, presents a selection of Klett's most evocative portraits with an essay by acclaimed writer Gregory McNamee.