Page 18 - the NOISE January 2016

STORMS, MAGIC AND RAW BEAUTY
Rez Dogs After the Rain and other A. Saylor Photography prints can be found year- long at the Artists’ Gallery in Flagstaff.
STORY BY CLAIR ANNA ROSE
On a stormy summer day, as I was preparing for an interview with local photographer Saylor, I received a text. “Hey, I may not make it today if there’s another tornado warning,” the message read. Oh my god! I thought, If there’s a tornado warning I’m steering clear away too.
It was about a half an hour later when I was crossing the parking lot of Campus Coffee Bean, when I paused to contemplate the real meaning behind the text. “Wait,”I wrote back. “You’re not canceling because you’re going to go chase the tornado, right?”
My phone gave a ping, indicating a new message, “Sounds like you’re starting to get to know me,” it read.
Coconino County didn’t get anymore tornados that week, but when the sky is dark and roiling, and the winds are bending trees so drastically they look about ready to snap, I imagine that somewhere in the desert north of town there is a red head driving a pick-up truck waiting for the opportune moment when the clouds will part and a cyclone will dip down from the sky.
I ask if there have been any close calls with tornadoes in the desert before or since I received that text message. “Unfortunately not,” the photographer laments. “I’m obsessed
with tornadoes. I dream about them. I know that some day I’m going to see one — and not just a little one like we occasionally have here in Arizona. I’m hoping one of my trips to Kansas will pay off. I have, however, seen things in the high desert that have scared me: tremendous super cells like skyscrapers made of clouds, single, solitary thunderheads packing so much violent energy that they spawn warnings many miles ahead of them, and if you live here, I don’t have to tell you about the lightning which can be seen a hundred miles away at night.”
Joking, or perhaps not in jest at all, it is suggested I attend one of these high desert storm shoots, seeing as though I have an affinity for being in the right place at the right time (or wrong if you ask me) — I was once in Needles for a total of 15 minutes when a huge freak storm hit and sucked trees right out of the ground and tore the roof off the theater.
A “good luck charm” for bad weather may not be needed. After shooting a storm in Monument Valley two reservation dogs had also sought higher ground and were sunning themselves close to where the photographer was shooting the storm, creating the image Rez Dogs After the Rain. That same night was spent in the Valley of the Gods waiting out a long night on higher ground in case of flash floods, while a dust storm raged, shaking the truck so violently the question,
“How strong does the wind have to be to blow over this truck,” came to mind.
Though tornados are high on the list of dangerous photographic dreams, lightning comes in at a close second.
“I normally shoot handheld from the hip, no lightning trigger necessary,” I’m told. “I decided to try longer exposures this year and had a close call while setting up the tripod. Another photographer was waiting in the truck when crack, boom, flashing light. Wide eyed I turned to look at her as she calmly said, ‘Did you get the shot?’ Sheepishly I responded, ‘I think so.’ I did. And it was an arrow of lightning straight to the ground, not far away. I’m terrified of lightning and for good reason. I remind myself each time I’m out in the open that it could be my last. I just want to make sure I’m staying aware of the consequences and making a conscious choice to take the risk.”
During another storm in July 2013, while on the North side of the San Francisco Peaks, a northeast storm blew in. “It allowed for some great views of the storm structure and
lightning over Wupatki and the San Francisco Volcanic Field,” the artist reflects. “My friend, who normally camps in her own pickup ended up stuck in mine. We were shooting lightning over my tailgate and the storm got so violent we closed up the truck, ate all of the food in the cooler and used it to catch the rain pouring in through a crack in the camper shell. In the morning we woke up to find a rubber orca toy, like you’d get at Sea World sitting on a stump in front of the truck. It rained so hard, a whale had washed up on the mountain.”
Thunderstorms aren’t the only weather extremes braved, the weekend before this article was written I was kept up to date on the Facebook news feed as status updates from that night’s camp spot appeared,“Only 12 more hours until Sunrise!” The long, cold night was spent waiting to see what the night’s storm brought to the already magical land of Wupatki. During that time a pronghorn visited the camp, soon to be chased away by coyotes, snow fell and the night grew colder.
“Despite my whining about sitting in the cold and darkness for 12 hours, I opened my eyes at seven and saw more snow than I had expected covering the juniper,” the photographer tells me. “There was a fog that left the landscape very stark and intimate. My field of vision was fairly limited and everything seemed so close and magical. I climbed to the top of Citadel and then walked around Lomaki. My life as a photographer is very dream-like. I’m often compelled to use the words ‘magical thinking’ when I talk about it, but it is magical. There’s no need to imagine anything. It’s all right there. I had not photographed Lomaki because I was waiting for a challenge and the snow presented an opportunity to do something different, so after all of these years, I went there and really looked around.”
Wupatki is one of the photographer’s favorite places to be, and frequent sojourns to the high desert lead to moments
immortalized out on the land. For each person a place holds a different meaning, and I ask what the place’s significance is. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” is the answer. “I think a lot about Stella Peshlakai Smith when I’m out there. The Peshlakai Family returned to their ancestral homelands along the Little Colorado following the Navajo Long Walk. When Stella passes, her descendants will no longer have the permission of the National Park Service to live on the land. The idea that they won’t be there saddens me greatly. I’d like to meet Stella at some point. I have a gift for her. It’s an image, called Spilled Sugar, I took of the most beautiful moment I’ve ever witnessed while spending time in the sacred place she calls home. I like to think she saw that moment too, as I stood alongside the road, moved to tears. When I’m out there, there’s no way for me to disconnect what I see now from the evidence of ancient people. There’s no break in the timeline or disappearance, or mystery to be solved. But it’s the history, and the spiritual presence of the ancestors, the presence of indigenous people, and the land, the weather — things we can’t control, powerful things, beautiful things that tie us all together. It makes for a great place to get grounded and contemplate the things that are the most important and I always go there when I need to deal with something difficult.” Another photograph Citadel Rainbow, shows a rainbow coming directly out of from behind the Citadel Ruins out past Wupatki. “I’d love to share both of these photos with Stella.”
Recently inspiration has been coming from the people who appreciate the photographer’s strengths, which aren’t found in the technical side of photography. Photoshop isn’t used, pictures aren’t shot in HDR and the camera isn’t defined as “the best.”
“I keep doing this, going to these places, struggling through the weather, traveling, sleeping sitting up for days in the front of my truck because I can’t find a safe place to pull over and camp,” the photographer reflects. “And when I’m doing this, I usually have moments where I doubt myself, but I do it anyway. So when someone sees what I do and really gets it, the rawness, the feeling of it and isn’t detoured by the fact that it’s not perfect in the way that so many photos are made perfect these days, that gives me hope that there are still people out there that see with something other than their eyes.”
A. Saylor Photography can be found at the Flagstaff Artists’ Gallery, 17 N. San Francisco St. New prints of lightning, and some of the artist’s other favorites will be on display in January. Flagstaffartistsgallery.com
| Clair Anna Rose doesn’t chase the storms; she lets the storms come to her. arts@thenoise.us
18 • january 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news • JANUARY 2016 • 27
of reflection, and many stunning images
have been