Hidden Valley, looking South Possibly 1977 - 1978

Lewis Baltz made this photograph, "Hidden Valley, looking South," sometime in his lifetime. It's a black and white image, and it’s all about the desert, and a sense of quiet desolation. You can almost feel him out there in the landscape, right? It's so open and sparse. I can imagine Baltz looking out and thinking, ‘How do I show this nothingness?’ There are these muted mountains in the background, with the suggestion of a road cutting through. And then, in the foreground, this field of scrubby bushes that look like a dense grey carpet. It must have felt like an act of courage to make something so un-dramatic! Baltz's pictures share something with the New Topographics photographers. They looked to the vernacular landscape and wanted to explore the tension between beauty and banality. He was definitely part of an artistic conversation about how to see and represent the everyday. It's so easy to overlook, but so full of meaning.