Saguaro Land: Seeing the Sonoran Desert through a camera lens

Saguaro Land is a series from The Show looking at the Sonoran Desert — the lushest, hottest desert in the world that happens to be our home.

In our newest conversation, we look at the Sonoran Desert through the lens of a camera — specifically the lens of Mark Klett’s camera. Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve almost certainly seen Klett’s photos over the last several decades.

He’s been shooting them since he came to Arizona in 1982. His images feature iconic desert scenes, often including saguaros.

The Show met with Klett recently at his studio, which is just through the backyard of his Tempe home. The building, which he shares with his family, features several printers, computers and boxes upon boxes of photos. That’s not to mention the nearly floor-to-ceiling desert images on the wall and the large-scale portraits taken by his wife that hang at one end of the studio.

The Show's conversation with Klett began with how he looks at the desert differently now than he did when he started in the early '80s.

Full conversation

MARK KLETT: Oh yeah, it’s kind of hard for me to even remember what I thought when I first came here in the 1980s, but it was definitely not a place I was familiar with. I came from Idaho, and it was February, and the first thing I noticed was it was nice and warm. And I thought, what am I getting myself into down here. But I had a lot of time on the weekends, and I would travel around to just try to understand this place that I lived in. I wasn’t familiar at all with a desert, with the plants, the cactus, the way that the landscape looked, the geography and so my way of introducing myself to it was just to go out and have an experience.

MARK BRODIE: What about it appeals to you as an artist, as a photographer?

MARK KLETT: Well, that’s an interesting question. The thing I was kind of poised to understand about this place was that it has the appearance initially of being a place that’s untouched and that’s not true. And you go out and you start looking around, soon realize that there’s a history here. And one of the things that does happen in the desert unlike other places in the country is that history often remains visible over time.

So if somebody drives across the desert, for example, that track could be visible for decades and decades after that. If someone built a dwelling, say a Native American site, that could still be visible hundreds of years later. So this record is to me really interesting that you can see this history of the passage of people and that’s one of the things that really drew me to the place was that I realized it wasn’t just my experience, this was multiple experiences over time. So when I went out I was looking for that, I was looking for the signs of that passage.

MARK BRODIE: When you look at the desert and you’re trying to find a spot, you know, a site to take your photos, what do you look for now? And I’m wondering if that’s maybe different than what you would have looked for in the past.

MARK KLETT: Yeah, I think that when I first started I was just photographing anything that seemed curious to me. You know, one of the ways that you work or I work as an artist is that it’s intuitive, I don’t really know what I’m trying to do when I start. I go out there and the first thing you have to do is just do something. So I’m photographing something I’m curious about or maybe I like the light or I like the composition I can work with. But after a while then I’m thinking what am I looking at, you know, what kinds of things am I looking at, why does it look this way, what’s the history of something I’m seeing?

And so that involves research. Well, what’s happened to me over time is that I’ve built up a lot of that, you know, I’ve gotten to know the place a lot more, I’ve read a lot of the history, and so when I go out now I’m quite aware of things that I wasn’t aware of 40 years ago. So I do make different pictures.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have an estimate as far as how many photos of saguaros you’ve taken over the years?

MARK KLETT: No, I’d hate to estimate that. Well, I mean it wouldn’t seem too outrageous even if I could remember it because, you know, I was working in the old days, I worked with film and a 4 by 5-inch camera. It’s a camera and a type of working that you don’t work super quickly. Now I work with a digital camera but it requires the same kind of thing, you put it on a tripod and set it up. So it’s a slower way of working but it’s a much more detailed way. So I mean somebody today with a DSLR or a digital camera can go out and shoot just thousands and thousands of pictures, you know, in a short period of time on a card, which we wouldn’t do in the old days, it cost too much with film even if you could try to do it. So I haven’t done that many, I would put the number in say the thousands, but it wouldn’t be like somebody could do today with a different kind of camera.

MARK BRODIE: What do you think that you learn about the Sonoran Desert through photographing it?

MARK KLETT: Well, again it’s that research. So I’ve been interested in saguaros as you mentioned for ever since I got here. And I didn’t know much about them when I started. I was responding to their shape, to the way they were articulated, to the kind of gestures that they made, their kind of reference to the human form, that sort of thing. But then over time, you know, I research more about saguaros and read about them. So you know, I think that the research on any subject that I run across, that impacts my vision, you know, when I get that information the next time I go out, I see things a little bit differently. So photography can start off as being a simple response to something, but I think in the end for it to become meaningful it often has to evolve in the way that it works into more knowledge.

MARK BRODIE: Do you consider it maybe part of your mission or part of your job to teach people a little bit about the Sonoran Desert? I mean your photographs are not just seen here in the Valley, they’re seen all over the country, all over the world. Do you feel that you’re trying to maybe teach people or maybe get people to appreciate or understand the desert a little more through your photographs?

MARK KLETT: Well, I hope maybe appreciate. I don’t know if I’m the best person to teach them really substantial facts about the desert. But I think if it makes people realize that this place isn’t just an iconic desert where people might think, if they’re not from around here for example, they might think oh the desert’s this dry, dusty place full of sand and all the cactus have two arms that look like somebody sticking their arms up in a hold up, and you know, if it’s just not this iconic generic view of what a desert is but instead it’s this really diverse land with an incredible history to it that’s the history layered with different cultures, you know, if that can get people to think about the richness of this place then I feel good about it.

MARK BRODIE: It’s interesting what you say about how the perception of the Sonoran Desert for a lot of people who are not from here is that it’s dry and dusty and not a lot lives here and not a lot grows here. You’ve been taking photos of it as you said since the early 80s. Have you gotten bored with it ever? Like do you still see things, different things, or maybe look at things differently or find new spots that you maybe didn’t know about before that really keeps it interesting?

MARK KLETT: No, I don’t get bored. In fact, I’ve thought or my wife and I have thought sometimes do we want to live someplace else and we both agree that we just couldn’t part with the desert. I think that it’s just too important to me now. The experience of the place never gets old for me. It’s a beautiful, it’s a place where danger and beauty and uncertainty all come together.

MARK BRODIE: What you’re saying is like when you’re out in the desert, it’s the real thing. It’s not Disneyland, it’s not a National Park, like this is it. Almost anything can happen out there.

MARK KLETT: Yeah, and I don’t mean to denigrate the National Parks because they’re still incredibly beautiful and gorgeous places, but I think it’s not curated in a sense. There aren’t any interpretive signs. There aren’t any campgrounds where I go. There aren’t any safety features, you know. And if you break down, you run out of water, or you run across abandoned smugglers in the wrong place, nobody’s going to help you out, you know. This is the place where you know you’re taking charge of your own life at that point and yet it’s also the place of incredible beauty.

MARK BRODIE: Mark Klett, thanks a lot for having us here, I appreciate it.

MARK KLETT: Oh, thanks for coming.