Most find the drive on Interstate 5 in the California Central Valley boring, but I have always been fascinated by the universe that gravitates around it, the miles of industrialized nut and fruit trees contrasting with the arid hills, the endless canals, the political signs signaling a not-so-distant war on water, the ordinary people working along its stops, the immigrants giving life to the valley. Let’s stop the car for a while. How does it feel to live here? 

 

I want you to drive down that road with me, to smell the gas, the asphalt, and the motor oil, to breathe the dusty and particule-charged air - one of the most polluted in the US -, to meet the travelers and the workers - among the the poorest and the most diverse in California -, to be hypnotized by the open fields - one of the most productive land in the world -, to feel the dry heat of the burning sun that is intensifying with climate change and progressively desertifying the Central Valley - see my other series « The Disappearing Land ». If the fate of the valley has long been a metaphor for the chaotic development of California, it is now a metaphor for our warming future. 

 

While exploring Interstate 5, its hills and its backroads with my 1951 and 1965 Rolleiflex film cameras, I got attached to the place, the people, and I lost myself in the beautiful concert of yellows, greens, and blues. I got thirsty, too, and I chocked in dust. 

 

Our stop is over. 

Let us start again, 

And let the asphalt unroll to infinity.

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The photo "When crops meet sky" has been exhibited online (Nov-Dec 2022) by the Center For Photographic Art (CFPA) in Carmel, CA : link

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