I've been experimenting with the first for the Muro Loco/Crazy Wall series. Here's one. If you didn't know it was the border fence, it would be an interesting game of "guess wtf this is."
Who wants to find me a place for a print exhibition of this series?
Here's another #MuroLoco / Crazy Wall shot. It's really hard to describe how wild this thing is. I've said before that I see it as a piece of public art in the service of authoritarianism. Being out here a lot, I can't help but see its performative character, its ideological purpose, its practical purpose (funneling big money into various private hands), *and* its raw aesthetic power.
I'm really hoping they don't close the access road immediately. The more I get to editing these shots, the more ideas I get that will require multiple repeat trips.
The big difficulty is that most of the strangeness of it comes from telephoto compression. But that means either shallow depth of field or using a tripod for long exposures at f11 or more, which isn't always possible for reasons.
Muro Loco/Wall Crazy
I've decided that "Wall Crazy", a direct translation, is better than "Crazy Wall", because it suggests the mental state of current border and immigration policy.
I just skimmed through the last trip's images and I've got some really good ones. They haven't closed the road yet and so far it seems the military are going to the populous areas. That is, they're going to where the media can easily get to and report, since this is all theater anyway.
Anyway, here's something slightly different. Shadows cast through the flood gates where the fence crosses California Gulch. I climbed up on the lock boxes on the gates themselves to get this shot.
Muro Loco/Wall Crazy
I just did a 2-minute edit on this, but I'll go back and do a bunch of masking to get it right. I took a lot of shots and didn't really like any of them at the time, but seeing them on my computer now, I like this one.
It really does take days and days and days out there in all sorts of weather, driving up and down the road, making note of where to be at what time of day, to get the best shots. There are some, like the tree with all the shadow stripes, that I've driven by 50 times, but never when the light was right, so never even noticed the potential there.
I just happened to have my camera pointed that general direction when this fella soared over. Digitally cropped way, way in. I've got another version where it's mostly sky, but I like this crop better.
Muro Loco/Wall Crazy
It is impossible to not notice the striking and improbable forms of this strange thing imposed on the landscape. You can say the same in metaphorical terms about U.S. border and immigration policy.
My camera shoots fascists
gz