This project uses an idea for titling a set of pictures borrowed from photo-derived works by John Baldessari, some of whose pieces are made from disparate juxtaposed photographs titled with their literal subjects (e.g. Fire, Money, Water, Sex / Planets, Chairs, Observer, White Paper / Midget, Bigman, Octopus ). I wanted to expand the idea from titling single pieces to titling a four-part project.
I began the joined-frame Slag panoramas while teaching workshops among the ruins of abandoned mining sites near Cripple Creek at the Victor School, Victor, Colorado, 1984–1985. I was familiar with David Hockney's “joiners” and was pleased to discover that my use of joined images made the up-and-down lineup of the frames mirror the physical layout and architecture of a site.
The Smog photographs of Los Angeles skies, titled with the day's smog report, seems to me a perversely ironic L.A. variant of Alfred Stieglitz's famous Equivalents. However my thinking and vision at the time was more inspired by the painted skies of Ed Ruscha and Joe Goode than by Stieglitz's Songs of the Sky.
Stars was to be lengthy exposures of the night sky and distant horizon, made with a camera attached to a telescope on a motorized equatorial mount, so that the stars would appear sharply focused while distant lights of habitation would show up as circular streaks—thus representing the spin of the Earth against the background of the cosmos.
Snow was to be photographs of white objects in snow—a photographic tonal challenge.
I did not make either the Stars or Snow photographs which remain entirely conceptual. If another photographer would like to make photographs that develop these ideas, I would be pleased to include a link to that person's pictures.

 
   
 
   
 
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
   
 
  Smog photographs are 16"×20" chromogenic (Ektacolor) prints.
   
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  The Slag photographs are composed of eleven 2¼"×2¼" overlapping silver-gelatin prints, mounted on 16"×24" boards. A larger version of Keene Wonder Mine was made of eleven 7½"×7½" frames mounted on a 36"×84" board. The larger version is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
   
 
 
   
 
   
 
 

Stars was to be lengthy exposures of the night sky and distant horizon, made with a camera attached to a telescope on a motorized equatorial mount, so that the stars would appear sharply focused while distant lights of habitation would show as circular streaks—thus representing the spin of the Earth against the background of the cosmos. Snow was to be photographs of white objects in snow—a photographic tonal challenge.
I did not make either the Stars or Snow photographs which remain entirely conceptual. If another photographer would like to make photographs that develop these ideas, I would be pleased to include a link to that person's pictures.