San Quentin Point, no. 25 Possibly 1982 - 1985

Lewis Baltz made this photograph, San Quentin Point, no. 25, location unknown, using black and white film. What grabs me first is the cracked, dry, light, and the way the film renders this, almost like a painting. The tones are so subtle, soft grays, but the texture is raw and harsh. It’s all about the surface here, that crusty cracked mud. The details feel important, each little crevice and shadow, all those tiny black lines dancing around creating a visual puzzle. My eye keeps going back to the bottom of the image where there is a thick crack in the mud that almost looks like a vein, a single dark line through the landscape. It reminds me of the Land Art movement, but way more subtle. Think of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, just way smaller, and more intimate. But I think Baltz is doing something different, he's not reshaping the land, but finding something new by looking at what’s already there. There's so much to see in what might seem like nothing at all.