Planet of the Fox and the Valley of Fire

My boyfriend and I usually go away for Thanksgiving and bring with us that year's Halloween costumes to shoot.  This year we went to Las Vegas.  I usually like to get away for a day while we're there and explore some new place - the holiday crowds make communing with nature at Zion, Hoover Dam, and Grand Canyon a little like making dinner in a litter box, so I found a small park an hour north of the strip, the Valley of Fire State Park.  Assessment: Holy shit.  It's breathtaking.  It's otherworldly.  It's ancient.  It's a mere $10 to get in, which will get you half a shot of Jack at Aria.

Other stops along the way were the neon rocks at Seven Magic Mountains (where tourists begged for pictures with the Fox and insisted we must have a hashtag), and the blight of Baker, California, where a new Marvel superhero was born. 

Travesties

In my mooning youth I chased clouds like a person with hope does. I felt capable - and even a little confident. Then I circumstantially slipped into an obedient adulthood and forgot what I was doing, what I wanted to be. Like walking into a room and having no recollection of why you’re there, I find myself purposeless and confused. I’ll be paying the bills of my witless youth for the rest of my compulsory life, but at least I have great credit. Monday through Friday, I put on a uniform. I smile when I’m not happy and promise to do things I don’t enjoy. I've withheld the truth 1,305 times when asked how I am, and I forge a face that belies the irrefragable failure I feel with every breath I take. I’ve breathed in and out 6,013,440 times. 

For this series, I asked my subjects to wear constrictive polyester suits and I directed them to struggle, to clench their fists, manufacture strained smiles, appear ready to run. I told them they were trapped but had no place to escape to. Maybe I hope that playing voyeur to my own agonies will make them sufferable somehow. Or maybe those agonies will be recognized by you, acknowledged as a rite of life, and then this work will exist for a reason.

More images at http://ashleywestleonard.com/Travesties

A Single Quantum Event

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” 
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Red Rock in Flip Flops

We had every intention of roadtripping to Zion National Park during our President's Day weekend in Las Vegas, but the many warnings I read about overcrowding turned me on to a more local yet outdoor experience, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.  

I'm certain every tourist in Nevada had the same idea and they were playing loud music on their phones.  Or they were climbing rocks in flip flops.  They dismantled trailside cairns - those pyramid shaped rock piles made by hiking hippies.  Oddly, once we jumped back into the sanctity of the inner Prius, there came a sense of calm and wonder in the majesty around us.