Cleared Hillside, Diamond Bar, California 1984

Joe Deal made this photograph, Cleared Hillside, Diamond Bar, California, using photography. It’s a landscape, but not really. It's about mark-making of a kind; those bulldozer tracks scarring the surface, like desperate attempts to redraw the terrain. The black and white gives it a stark, almost diagrammatic feel. The textures are key – the rough, raw earth against the slick, mechanical lines of the tire tracks. Look at the way the light catches those gouges in the earth. They become deep, almost violent strokes. What does that say about our relationship to the land? It's an interesting inversion of the sublime, like a Robert Smithson sculpture but unintentional. This image, with its bleak beauty and unsettling implications, really sticks with you.