John Eide

In 1992 and 1993, I swapped jobs with a fellow photo professor from Arizona State University. He lived in my house in Portland. I lived in his apartment in Mesa. 

I had never been to the Southwest before so it was an entirely new urban landscape experience for me.

However I found the Phoenix area, especially Mesa, where I lived, to be to be somewhat of a social and cultural wasteland. So my three day weekends were spent camping and exploring in all the corners of Arizona. I spent time on the Navajo nation. I explored the north rim of the Grand Canyon. When it got cold, I went south into the Sonoran Desert and west to the Yuma, Arizona area. I sought out traces the Anasazi had left on the land - pueblo ruins, petroglyphs, potsherds. I also wandered through the Nevada Desert and over to Los Angels to check out the art scene there.

Like my time in Paris, I wanted the process of photographing the southwest to act as a diary and the resulting photographs as a way of sharing my discoveries of that area with others.

I made a book combining many of these images with text. You may see the book by opening Books, on the left, below.