San Quentin Point, no. 24 Possibly 1982 - 1985

Lewis Baltz took this photograph, San Quentin Point, no. 24, sometime in the 20th century, maybe with a large format camera? I'm imagining him, setting up his camera, fiddling with the settings. It's this cracked, almost lunar landscape of dried mud, a desolate no man's land. The cracked earth looks almost like a painting. I think about the process of layering and drying, building up texture through time and weathering. There is a strange cross formed in the earth, dividing the land, echoing the geometry of minimalist sculpture like Carl Andre. Baltz is inviting us to see the world as a series of formal investigations, how we impose order onto chaos. It reminds me of the work of other photographers, like the Bechers, who documented industrial structures with such obsessive detail. Artists are always building on what has come before, engaging in this endless conversation across generations. They help us question how we perceive, interpret, and assign meaning.