Mark Klett: Camino del Diablo

by Mark Klett (Photographer), Raphael Pumpelly (Contributor)

Much of Mark Klett's (born 1952) work as a photographer has entailed conversations with historical images. For this project, Klett worked only with the account of a young mining engineer named Raphael Pumpelly who wrote of his perilous journey through Arizona and Mexico in 1861 on the lawless Camino del Diablo or "road of the devil." More than 150 years later, Klett traversed the same route, making photographs in response to Pumpelly's words. Today, most of the Camino is located on the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range and the border is a militarized zone patrolled by government agents and crisscrossed by air and ground forces practicing for war. Unable to trace the engineer's exact steps, Klett created images that are not literal references to specific places or events; rather, he sought to produce a more poetic narrative of their shared experience of the Arizona desert.

172 pages, Hardcover

Published December 27, 2016

Reviews

[Philippe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a mixed bag. In 1861, a young mining engineer made a perilous trek on horseback through the Sonoran Desert. Raphael Pumpelly's report is included in the book as a facsimile insert. It tells a truly harrowing tale of a vast, lawless area under a merciless climate, violently contested by white colonial miners, Apache tribes, and marauding bands of Mexican peons. Mark Klett revisits the area with the 19th century traveller's narrative in mind, exploring resonances with today's climate of surveillance and violence. Much of the area has been given over to bombing ranges and military training grounds, and is heavily policed by the U.S. Border Patrol.

The book is structured as a series of mini-essays, framed by narrative cues from the original travelogue. Klett has an expert photographic eye, and there are a number of compelling frames scattered throughout the book. However, the images are in color, presumably digitally captured, and lack the tantalizing combination of luminosity, austerity, and fragility of his trademark large-format positives. Also they strike me as tame compared to the savagery of the 19th-century struggles that played out in these lands. And they are insufficiently evocative to do justice to the complex nexus of imperialism, colonialism, and extractivism still at work in these borderlands. The mushy feel of the cover and the thick paper stock don't endear this book to me. At the back there is a takeout insert in leporello format with a series of frames of saguaro cacti. It feels anecdotal and it's unclear how this fits the bigger narrative. All in all it's an elusive combination of substance, style, and form that derails this ambitious publication. 2,5 stars.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic printing.