Mark Klett: Traveling the Devil’s Highway—Exploring the Borderlands of the Sonoran Desert, Arizona

Mark Klett, Sunrise Near Raven Butte, Gila Mountains, 2014

Mark Klett, Saguaro trunk at dawn, 2013

Mark Klett, Ocotillo and Mosque made from shipping containers, “Combat Village,” Marine Training camp in the Copper Mountains, 2013

Mark Klett, Bighorn sheep through border fence, looking into Mexico, 2015

Mark Klett, Faint trail, granitic mountains near Raven Butte, 2013

Mark Klett, Border patrol “cutting sign,” near midnight, el Camino del Diablo, 2013

 

 

 

Join photographer Mark Klett for a seven-day field workshop and camping expedition that will revisit a legendary landscape during a new century. Klett will guide the group through the heart of the Camino del Diablo, or the Road of the Devil, which crosses mountains and basins as it winds through the lush desert landscape in the borderlands of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. This trip is designed for photographers who can work independently yet participate within a group setting, and who like outdoor adventure.

        In 1861, a young mining engineer named Raphael Pumpelly had traveled the Camino, which was so rugged that only the most intrepid of travelers dared to cross. He famously described it in his book Across America and Asia (1870) as an arid landscape of incredible beauty, which was home to some of the greatest biodiversity and spectacular desert scenes on the continent. Today the same road is still accessible, and the landscape is as magnificent and wild as it has been for centuries. The route traverses open desert, mountain ranges, a military bombing range, and a national wildlife refuge. The landscape reveals its human history in the form of artifacts from military occupation, human migration, and centuries of native cultures that predate Anglo settlement in the region.

        The workshop will include a portfolio review at the beginning, and a review of work created during the excursion at the end. Participants will meet in and depart from Phoenix, Arizona, and travel by car to the field region. They will then drive the Camino and camp for three nights in the wild and undeveloped desert landscape. The workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to make new photographic work in this unique location. It will be a group experience with ample opportunities for individual exploration. The route will take participants close to the border of Mexico, to the edge of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and across the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range. The goal is to explore a place of natural beauty and compelling human history.

Please view the itinerary for a day-to-day schedule.

Mark Klett is Regents’ Professor of Art and Distinguished Sustainability Scholar at Arizona State University. He is a photographer whose background includes working as a geologist before turning to art practice. His photographic projects span a period of more than thirty-five years, and as the chief photographer for the Rephotographic Survey Project (1977–79), he established his artistic perspective on the American Western landscape by rephotographing Western sites first visited in the 1860s.

        Klett has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Buhl Foundation, and Japan–United States Friendship Commission. His work has been exhibited and published in the United States and internationally, and his work is held in over eighty museum collections worldwide. He is the author of fifteen books, including Reconstructing the View: the Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe (2012), The Half Life of History (2011), Saguaros (2007), After the Ruins (2006), Yosemite in Time (with Byron Wolfe and Rebecca Solnit, 2005), Third Views, Second Sights (2004), Revealing Territory(1990), and Second View: The Rephotographic Survey Project (1984).

 

Currently enrolled photography students and Aperture Members at the $250 level and above receive a 10% discount on workshop tuition. To learn more about becoming a member of Aperture, please visit: aperture.org/join.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please complete the application below. Once you have completed the application you will be contacted by Aperture with further instructions regarding how to complete the $500 non-refundable deposit. Please note: your registration is NOT complete until the $500 non-refundable deposit has been processed by Aperture Foundation.

Tuition must be paid in full by February 1, 2016.

Please be sure to review our terms and conditions before completing the application. By submitting the application, you agree to all of the terms and conditions including the our cancellation policy.

If you have any questions please contact education@aperture.org with any questions.

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