A Retake On Trona, CA
I’ve spent half a lifetime intermittently passing through Trona, California on my way elsewhere (to Death Valley, the Owens Valley, Barstow, etc.). And I’ve spent a lot of that time trying hard to capture the slightly-surreal combination of glinting desert hills, the industrial buildings and activity, the shimmering salt pans, the acres of discarded junk, and the everyday life around me as I drive on by (yes, I’m always just passing through). I’ve written about all this here before (e.g. “Trona, CA”), but this is yet another attempt, with a different take on how to do it.
This isn’t technically a good photo. I took it while we were driving through town somewhat randomly (I was in the passenger seat for once), and there’s motion blur in there as well as a slightly iffy focus in places — but I still think it emphasizes a lot of what I find strange about Trona. All those slim verticals, the fractal(ish) geometry of the rugged hills contrasting with the angular lines and planes of the buildings, the almost human-free landscape, the way the plant buildings look pushed up against those hills, the wide-open waste land in the foreground — all those things that bring me back again and again.
Yes, it’s missing one of the things I’ve always tried to capture in Trona — the colors — but this one works nicely for me as abstract geometry and texture rooted in a very specific time and place. And I have to admit I like the way using black and white makes it look like some 1930's-era photo (until you look at the details — those cars, for instance). And that lack of color is rare in the sorts of things I want to photograph, but I sense a small revival in my black and white output. We shall see….
