Not
a Ruin
Bombay Beach gets photographed as a ruin roughly every weekend. Two hundred and thirty-one people live there. That gap — between the picture everyone takes and the place that is actually in front of them — is what this trip is about, and it is why the hardest hour is deliberately the flattest one.
The Threads
what the day is really aboutBaltz photographed empty industrial parks with the same care other people gave to landscapes, and the whole argument of it was that the vacancy was chosen, not failed. This route is the desert version: ten acres of assembled junk that is a serious body of work, a hand-painted hill that a charity now maintains, and a lived-in town that the internet insists is a ruin. Shoot the ordinary deliberately — and get the ethics of the last one right.
And under it one rhythm: built, painted, lived in. Three kinds of ordinary, each of which somebody chose.
Shoot the vacant on purpose. Stay on the street at Bombay Beach. Flat light is the right light.
Teaches · Mundane — after Lewis Baltz · Grant Mudford
The Map
where it all is · tap a point for its legOpen the whole day in Google Maps ↗ — in order: Noah Purifoy · Salvation Mountain · Bombay Beach. It routes from wherever the phone is, and every spot below links its own leg the same way.
Tap any point for the day it belongs to. Two clusters about a hundred miles apart: Joshua Tree on day one, the Salton Sea on day two.
Nothing on this route takes a booking — not Purifoy, not Salvation Mountain, not Bombay Beach. All three are free. The only bookable thing anywhere near it is the Integratron sound bath, which is $62.89, Wed–Sat, released one month at a time on the 1st — and which you cannot photograph or record, so it is not really part of a photographic trip.
The Days
two days · two clusters, a hundred miles apartA weekend's unit is the day — each carries a locator map, its theme, and an energy read. A gold pill on the clock means that time belongs to someone else: a door that opens or a slot that was booked. Everything unpilled is a suggested shape, not a schedule.
One place, worked properly, until sundown.
Straight out through the pass, the wind farms on both sides.
Range here is planned for hard driving, not the sticker: home to Yucca Valley is about a hundred and forty miles with a three-thousand-foot climb at the end, and on one charge it arrives on nothing. Twenty-five minutes here fixes it.
Up off the desert floor onto the high desert, and then the Joshua trees.
Charge here rather than later — it covers both of today’s stops and the start of tomorrow.
A conditional stop, and honestly a minor one: a white all-wood dome sitting on open desert floor, which as a shape against nothing is a good frame and as an experience is un-photographable by rule. If the site is shut or it is the wrong day, drive past it — it is fifteen minutes out of your way, not the reason you came. It is a National Historic site and an acoustic dome, incidentally, not a UFO museum.
The last food and the last plumbing before an afternoon on an open site.
Fifteen years of Purifoy’s work, built on site out of salvage and left in the open to weather — ten acres of it, and it is much bigger and much stranger than photographs suggest. Give it the whole afternoon. The temptation is to shoot the most sculptural pieces from a dramatic low angle; the more interesting discipline is Baltz’s — square-on, level, same distance, including the dull ones, and let the accumulation do the work. Park in the shade across the road.
The last half hour before the site closes. Worth staying for — but note that the low warm light flatters the salvage into something picturesque, which is the opposite of the argument this trip is making. The honest frames were the flat ones you took at two.
Flat midday light, chosen on purpose.
Short. Indio is the real charge of the morning; this just means you are not hunting for a stall at seven.
Off the high desert and down past the wind farms to the valley floor.
The whole reason day two works. There is no charging of any kind along the eastern shore, so the shore is done as one loop from here and back.
Along the eastern shore. The sea appears on the right and the towns get progressively thinner.
Leonard Knight’s painted adobe hill, thirty years of it, blazing under a low morning sun. Park at least ten feet back from any painted surface. On the ground the convention is to walk only the yellow-painted path — that is on-site practice rather than published policy, but it is what keeps the thing standing. Knight died in 2014 and it did not decay: a charity maintains it, and the real threat is who owns the land, not collapse. The hill you can see is the second one; the first fell down in 1989.
A short hop up the eastern shore between the two stops.
The deliberate centerpiece, at deliberately the worst hour. High flat light kills drama, which is exactly why it is right here: it strips the place of the apocalyptic glow that every other photograph of it has and leaves you with what is actually there — a small inhabited town on a salt shore, with art in it. Shoot from the street. Don't cross onto posted or fenced lots, don't photograph into people’s windows, and treat the fact that somebody lives behind that installation as part of the subject rather than an obstacle to it.
Back up the shore and inland. This is the leg the morning’s charge at Indio was for.
A big site and a welcome one. Enough here for Cabazon, not for home.
Up the valley with the wind farms on both sides.
The same stop as yesterday morning, doing the same job in reverse.
Home through the pass and down into the basin.
The Spots
where to stand · what the light does · who built itThree anchors and one deliberate midday. Nothing is bookable and nothing costs anything. Tap a spot’s map for driving directions.
- Stand
- Square-on and level, at the same distance from each piece — including the dull ones.
- Light
- 🔴 Flat is the correct light here — overcast, or the even hours before the sun drops. Low golden light is the temptation, and it is the drama Baltz refuses.
- Frame
- Accumulation rather than drama. Ten acres shot as a set, not as ten heroes. The 90V for one assemblage per frame, square-on, at one distance; the 38V for the whole field.
- See
- Free and open daily, with no booking — but drones are banned on the site for any reason.
- Stand
- Back, and low. Park ten feet clear of anything painted.
- Light
- Early, with the sun still low in the east — it lights the front of the hill, which faces roughly east toward Beal Road.
- Frame
- Painted bands and lettering read as shape — flat blocks of color stacked against an empty sky, the words as pattern rather than message. The 90V for one panel filling the frame; the 38V for the whole hill.
- See
- A charity has maintained it since Knight died in 2014 — this is the second mountain; the first collapsed in 1989.
- Stand
- 🔴 On the street. Not on a private lot, and not pointed at somebody's window.
- Light
- Flat, high and unhelpful — chosen for exactly that reason.
- Frame
- A town, not a ruin. Level, ordinary, everything horizontal. On the 38V, so the house behind stays in.
- See
- Population 231 at the 2020 census, down from 295, with artists moving in since 2018. The ghost-town framing is a decade out of date.
Before You Go
the pack, the donations, and the etiquetteCamera
- Hasselblad X2D II, the 38V and the 90V, in color
- Spare batteries — the X2D will not last the day on one
- 🔴 No drone — banned outright at Purifoy, and you would be flying over homes at Bombay Beach
- A cloth — the Salton Sea shore is salt and it gets everywhere
Body
- Sun cover; two of the three stops have no shade at all
- Shoes that can take dirt and sand
- Water — nothing at Purifoy, nothing at Salvation Mountain
- Layers for a desert morning
Car
- Cabazon both ways — Morongo Trail, 12 stalls · not optional
- Charge at Yucca Valley on day one — the fastest charging up there
- 🔴 Indio first on day two, to 95–100% — 46 stalls, and nothing at Niland or Bombay Beach
- Nearest fuel to Bombay Beach is twenty miles
Money
- Cash for the donation box at Salvation Mountain — the box, not a person
- Purifoy takes donations electronically
- Nothing else on this trip costs anything
What You Got
the frames that survived the editThe geotag gets each frame close to where it stood — close, not exact; the last hundred yards are always a hunt. What a machine can't do is the part below: which ones survived, and whether the day was worth the drive.
The frame of the trip.
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Did I shoot the empty thing on purpose, or because nothing better turned up?
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Bombay Beach in flat midday light — did that work, or did I just get a worse picture?
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Was there a frame I decided not to take, and was that right?
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After
what the day taughtDid treating it as a town rather than a ruin change what I came back with?
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Is the deliberately-bad light a real discipline or an affectation?
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Purifoy in one afternoon — enough, or does it want a whole day?
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Where else am I photographing somebody's home and calling it a ruin?
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