HIDDEN WATERS
Disappearing Desert Springs
Across the American West, desert springs are easy to overlook, remote, often no more than pools of water that seem improbable within the dry landscape. They sustain life in landscapes that offer little else, and for millennia, humans have followed them to survive and migrate. Many are now disappearing due to prolonged drought and aquifer overuse, and once gone, they may never return.
My connection to these waters started when living in a bone-dry Arizona town where water was something I thought about every day. Before this project had a shape, I spoke with intertribal Water Keepers who described how springs on their lands were drying up, a loss both physical and cultural. Their words shaped how I understand these places.
Influenced by the desert paintings of Maynard Dixon, I work with an infrared and muted palette to evoke the slow drying of water while approaching each spring as a small but weighted presence within the broader landscape. These photographs bear witness to what is still there, because once it is gone, each loss gradually redraws what we think of as normal.