Waiting For The Rain
- Palm Springs Series I -
I
When arriving in Palm Springs, the first things I saw were giant wind farms over desert fields and miles of gated condominiums, golf courses, swimming pools, stores, and parking lots. I was uncertain whether I was entering a vacation paradise or a community fighting for its survival.
I felt like travelling in time, torn between an abundant past and a sterile future, awe and despair. It took me some time to figure out the trajectory of the place: a disappearing oasis. I waited for a rain that never came – and I ended up with my feet buried in the sand. This project is divided into three chapters that reflect the arc of the place.
“Waiting for the Rain” travels from a natural oasis in a distant past to a post-climate change future, when sand might cover everything. Swimming pools maintain the illusion that Palm Springs is still the oasis it was, whereas drifting sands and large water drainage channels - designed to avoid flash flooding - are indicative of an unsustainable ecological model. California faces a durable drought and imports water from the ever-shrinking Colorado River.
Let our imagination run wild. Two-hundred years from now. A group of humans visit the arid, burned-out, sandy ruins of Palm Springs in air-conditioned driverless pods, listening to audio guides describing the remains of what will be considered the apogee of consumption society. “To your right, admire the remains of a mall where our ancestors used to perform shopping, in stores. You can imagine palm trees planted in what was called a parking lot, to your right”.
Film captured with a 1951 and a 1965 Rolleiflex cameras, on Kodak Portra 400. Film processed by Photoworks SF.
Gated
- Palm Springs Series II -
Entertained
- Palm Springs Series III -
“Gated” strolls along the open neighborhoods of the mid-century, admires how modernist architecture blends itself into the rocks and desert, and leaves us left behind closed doors in the gated communities that started flourishing in the 1980’s. Perhaps these secluded RV communities are a vision of the habitat of the future.
“Entertained” wanders from the amusement amenities built in the 1970’s and the 1980’s – you can play… if you pay! Shop, shop, shop! – to an uncertain post-climate change future, where malls and gas stations might be covered in sand.