The biggest pain in the ass is that I don’t even own the car.  It’s a rental.  A Mazda 5.  Yes, a minivan.  I’m in love with a minivan and I’m not quite sure how to explain that to my old pickup.  I’m not sure that she would understand and I’m not looking forward to the moment when I pass one on the street with the other on my arm.  The Mazda 5 –a not-so-popular addition to Mazda’s number series vehicles –features a set of windows around its tail that mimic either the shape of a rearview window or that of a Jeston’s era television screen.  Each shape lends its cycloptic aperture to one of two types of composition: the square and the panoramic.  The shape, in turn, allows the standard frame of a 35mm SLR to transform into something altogether new.  

In the case of this series of images, the car becomes a tool for exploring the iconography of the landscape through which it moves.  The project started in Wyoming and, originally, looked as though it would end there.  Rental car companies don’t guarantee you a particular model and I have spent two years trying to get a hold of the car without any luck.  I really don’t like the 5 enough to consider it for my next vehicle and I haven’t found a pick-n-pull junkyard that had the car around (yes, I’ve been scheming to cut up the rear quarter panels just to get the precise shape and feel without the rest of the car).  

AARP’s election day assignment gave me enough pull to get the rental company to guarantee the particular model of car.  So, once that assignment was complete, I held on to the car and made my way south through New Mexico and Arizona without much of an agenda aside from wandering through a few highways that have been lost to me until last week.  The journey spanned 1500 miles of driving, a couple nights camped in Walmart parking lots, a quick assignment in Arizona, and a handful of chance meetings with friends and fellow photographers. 

The trip was proof positive that plans are best left for the birds.  Not a single thing that I thought I’d want to photograph netted the images that my mind’s eye had envisioned.  Albuquerque’s Día de los Muertos celebration was (mostly) a bust.  Saguaro National Park didn’t do much for me.  The Titan Missile Museum was less than titanic (for this project, anyhow).  The path between these destinations, however, proved to be the unlikely home for a second round of Diving Bell images.  

The biggest pain in the ass is that I don't even own the car.  It's a rental.  A Mazda 5.  Yes, a minivan.  I'm in love with a minivan and I'm not quite sure how to explain that to my old pickup.  I'm not sure that she would understand and I'm not looking forward ...