Photographs by Malcolm Childers: January 2015

Click on any image to enlarge.

In May of 1987 I began three month road trip in my VW camper van to do the '111th Meridian Project.' This involved photographing the corridor of land between the 110th and 112th Meridian as it crosses the US from the Canadian to the Mexican border, about 1250 miles long and 100 miles wide. I created the 111th Meridian Project to visually substantiate a very large conceptual art work which I had titled "A Gathering of Horizons." To accomplish this I would do surface and aerial photography to generate credibility for my art concept that The Planet Earth is a work of art.

The project took 5 years and to complete and left me with images and an experience of this world that changed my life forever. This blog post is about just one small facet of that life changing experience.

Usually most of us just want to get through deserts, right? It's just a bunch of dirt, sand, mud, rocks, and emptiness that seems to go on forever. Once in a while you can just get a glimpse of the rare beauty it holds when a butte or a uplift raises up the land like a Moroccan carpet merchant. But, unfortunately, driving in a car, riding motorcycle, a bike or even walking you are limited by your height and your imagination as to what you can actually know about space you are moving through.

What could you learn if you could see it like a bird? For me Factory Butte in Wayne County, Utah was the Moroccan carpet merchant who had been hocking his wares since I first wandered through this mystical part of the west. Even when I drove out on the long mud road toward the mountain, this detail was what I could see of the carpet at land level.

"FACTORY BROADSIDE,"

The rest of these photographs are from subsequent flights over the butte and it's pediment as I was substantiating my concept thesis. I can never look at desert again without wondering what treasures I am missing.

What a difference even a 1000 ft makes.

"FULL FRONTAL FACTORY BUTTE"