EXHIBITION DETAILS

Dessert | David Zimmerman

2011

The Center for Fine Art Photography welcomes you to experience Desert by the internationally  acclaimed photographer, David Zimmerman. Zimmerman’s artistic sensibility transcends the literal  sand and sky before the camera to capture a profound awareness of the greater surroundings—a  sensibility that earned him the L’Iris D’Or award for the world’s best landscape photography and  photographer of the year (Sony 2009).  

Some of Zimmerman’s work has earned honors at C4FAP’s prior exhibitions. Juror Kathy Morgan  (National Geographic) singled out a piece from Desert as “a beautiful combination of realism and  abstraction,” referring to the haunting quality described by the play of light and shifting landscape. The  entire Desert series is an experience of the sublime that pulls you in and lulls you into a state of  wonder and awe.  

STATEMENT

It is a great paradox of human existence that we must exploit the resources of the planet in order to exist. My work in natural, endangered and altered landscapes is an attempt to understand the balance between human need, and the consequences of unrelenting depletion of the planet's resources. 

The sometimes tranquil, sometimes fierce nature of the desert, and my own response and interaction with these environments inspired the first set of photographs. Beyond witnessing the sheer beauty and magnitude of the landscape, I began to feel a sense of the fragile balance of man's presence on the land. The desert can be haunting; in the dark, in the heat or in a storm, I feel my own vulnerability. 

Living in cities much of my life, questions of my own exposure in the natural world rarely occurred and the impact of my actions seemed negligible, as I was one of many millions. This is where the second part of the project began, with questions of how we relate to and impact the natural world by our actions. Symbolic of the damage being done, abstract images of tracks and the short film "desert" reveal a very different perspective. Empowered by a sense of entitlement and immunity, untold millions consider their actions to have little or no impact on the land.