This work explores the geological history of Southern California’s deserts through photographic shadow boxes that function as intimate archives of deep time. Drawing from the Mojave and Colorado deserts, these constructions bring together photographic fragments, found materials, and sculptural space to evoke landscapes shaped by tectonic force, erosion, and prolonged absence of water. The desert is not presented as a static place, but as an active record—continually folding past and present into one another.

The shadow box format is informed by Joseph Cornell’s mid-20th-century assemblages, particularly his ability to transform containment into contemplation. Like Cornell, I am interested in the box as a vessel for memory, but my focus shifts from the poetic interior to the geologic exterior—from human reverie to planetary process. Each box becomes a microcosm, compressing millions of years into a shallow space where strata, shadows, and photographic planes suggest fault lines, sedimentary layers, and vanished seas.

Photography in this work operates less as documentation and more as excavation. Images are treated as surfaces to be layered, obscured, or fractured, mirroring the way deserts preserve and erase history simultaneously. Light and shadow are integral elements, casting temporal ambiguity and emphasizing the desert’s quiet volatility. What appears minimal or barren reveals complexity upon sustained looking.

By working at the intersection of photography, sculpture, and assemblage, I aim to slow perception and invite a tactile engagement with time. These shadow boxes are not representations of specific sites, but meditations on geological duration—on landscapes that predate human presence and will continue to transform long after it. In this way, the work reflects on scale, impermanence, and the fragile role of human observation within an ancient and evolving terrain.