CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/10/2017

Mark Klett: Camino del Diablo

El Camino del Diablo, or "Road of the Devil," along the Arizona-Mexico border, was one of the Southwest's most dangerous routes in the nineteenth century. Mark Klett's gorgeous new Radius monograph traces the 1861 route described by traveling mining engineer Raphael Pumpelly, whose hand-written journal is reproduced in facsimile alongside Klett's photographs. "Today, much of the region is patrolled by government agents and crisscrossed by air and ground forces practicing for war," Klett writes. "Immigrants and drug smugglers cross under the cover of darkness or through the ruggedness of the terrain, hiding from detection. An extreme climate kills many who dare travel in hot weather. The route has an occupied feel that registers a lengthy history of violence and surveillance along an increasingly militarized border. There's a legacy of human presence, sometimes tragedy, left only in traces. Yet as in Pumpelly's day, El Camino remains one of the most striking and wild regions of the Sonoran Desert. It is a place located at the compelling intersection of transience, potential danger, and constant beauty." Learn more about Klett's signing this afternoon at SPE here.