• In Search of the Bristlecone Pines

    These bristlecones live in remote terrain at 10,000 feet elevation along the California/Nevada border; reaching and exploring their habitat takes most of one day. Walking among them propels you toward an ethereal realm of experience heightened by the thin atmosphere, which loosens dreaming. A few of the trees have been alive since the building of […]

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    June 22, 2020 By Redburnusa

  • Impersonating the Dead

    It is not something I would do myself unless cajoled or threatened; however, other people do it freely with commitment and enthusiasm. I am speaking of inhabiting the skins and personalities of dead human beings. You see a Confederate rifleman above — part of a doomed 19th century rebellion — embodied now by a 21st […]

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    May 31, 2020 By Redburnusa

  • This Subject Seems Inexhaustible

      Regarding water in motion: Permutations of flow and reflection, Seem limitless. No stream the same, No glimpse, And no time alike.        

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    May 21, 2020 By Redburnusa

  • Zoomorphic Rocks — Is There An Explanation?

    Everywhere I go in the desert I see individual stones and stone formations resembling animals. Many look like dinosaurs, as in the image above in the Mojave. Others are more enigmatic — an example of which follows in the photograph below. There I see a stylized horse clearly; others perceive a lion’s head attached to […]

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    May 20, 2020 By Redburnusa

  • Working With the Dead

    “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” Susan Sontag (from On Photography) Editing a photograph like this in light of Ms. Sontag’s formulation provokes strange sensations. […]

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    May 18, 2020 By Redburnusa

  • The Virtual and The Real

    We should be getting used to it — living simultaneously in Reality and Hyperreality, with the Actual and its now electronic cultural enhancements and substitutions. The foreground above belongs to the Real; the stallion and the sawdust he kicks up down the stretch are without doubt true and tangible. Middle ground and background become progressively […]

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    May 4, 2020 By Redburnusa
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    In Art Historical, Cultural Anthropology, Pilgrimages, Reportage
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About the Author

Redburnusa is a pseudonym used by a photographer living near Phoenix, Arizona. Mr. Howerton comments on meaning in photography and his own journey from the perspective of a seeker, rather than a professional artist or credentialed intellectual. He has authored each journal entry. Mr. Howerton has created and edited every image appearing here, unless  otherwise indicated in the text. To contact him personally, write to crhowerton@gmail.com.

 

You can view his Desert Portfolio here: http://www.desertperceptions.com.

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