“Skull & Egg”
silver gelatin print
© 1970
My friend Ray Bravo and I went out to Joshua Tree National Park a couple of times, and I went out there with other friends as well because the place is totally mind blowing. While Ray and I were out crawling around on the big boulders one of us found this skull. It had obviously been there a long time, but I thought is was beautifully raw and tragic. I photographed it many times, however, in this instance it was for an assignment while I was attending Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Actually, they hadn’t moved to Pasadena at this time. They were over toward West L.A. (6th Street as I recall). One of my father’s friends, Cliff, had given me his old enlarger and I printed this at home, not on campus. It was a great experience to have models, professional dancers, to stand there, contort themselves, and get all dressed up with costuming when there is no way in the world a young man like I was then could afford to photograph them outside of the educational environment.
At the end of it all, here in 2011, what I found in a box yesterday was evidence of my major body of work. I continue to work with bones to this very day. I found a new one out next to my car that I’ll post in a couple days.