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High & Dry

High & Dry is photographer Osceola Refetoff's collaboration with writers Christopher Langley and Jack Eidt exploring the desert and the people who live there. The myth of the West is charged with hope and ambition, yet the current reality reflects a patchwork of struggling communities, dreamers, dropouts, and military-industrial compounds. Balancing images and words with the personal and historical, High & Dry focuses on the remnants and the future of human activity across these vast open spaces — territory that is becoming increasingly dominated by mining, immense wind and solar arrays, and the controversial dynamics of critical resource allocation. To explore more High & Dry, visit desertdispatches.com.

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Abandoned Marine Base Guard Shack – Slab City, CA – 2024
Some call Slab City the Last Free Place, attracted by no-cost camping and supposed self-government. But life here is not free. Long-term residents (called Slabbers) must confront the ever-hotter-and-drier desert climate without standard electricity, running water, nor sewage system.
Sean Guerrero – Re In Car Nation – Bombay Beach, California – 2024
Join High & Dry collaborators on their journey navigating three days of co-creation in this circus full of artists, dreamers, thinkers, and what the event organizers call “facilitators of sensitive but provocative interactions" — otherwise known as the Bombay Beach Biennale.
Rock Formation Near Obsidian Butte – Calipatria, California – 2024
The first dispatch in a series exploring the Salton Sea and lithium extraction in Imperial Valley.
A black and white photo of a compact dirt road leading up to a mountain range in a desert environment. A road drives down the road, towards the camera. Clouds hover closely to the mountain range.
The Alabama Hills is a beautiful, scenic, diverse and world-famous location, sought out by artists, filmmakers and tourists for its landscape allure. Yet over the years these hills have been used, abused and vandalized by visitors.
A black and white image of a highway lined by trees with the mountains in the background.
In the desert, the skies are illuminated by the setting sun. A dazzling display of swirls, slashes and streaks of the clouds rush by. High & Dry explores the dazzling cloud formations in the California high desert.
Dead Tree Nests & Thermal Plants - Infrared Exposure - Salton Sea, CA - 2014  | Osceola Refetoff
Our lives are short. When compared to the landscape around us, we are the proverbial mayfly. Given the brevity of our mortality, we swell with pride, or shutter from embarrassment about what we have done to our home.
Building K – Whittaker-Bermite Site – Santa Clarita, CA – 2017 | Osceola Refetoff
Whittaker-Bermite in Santa Clarita has had many transformation, but this latest one maybe the most promising of all.
Canyon View – Whittaker-Bermite Site – Santa Clarita, CA – 2017 | Osceola Refetoff
Exhaustive landscapes have lives, history and stories to be read. Whittaker-Bermite in Santa Clarita, California — this scarred landscape especially has had many lives, which help guests understand better the condition of our world now.
 Stop-Liquor Jr Market – Mojave, CA – 2016 | Osceola Refetoff
Trinity Street in Mojave, California runs only three blocks, but in it High & Dry finds the cross-section of the lower economic strata of the United States and a "king" is facing society's toughest challenges.
Boarded-Up Farm House - Color/Infrared Exposure - Bishop, CA - 2016 | Osceola Refetoff
When pioneer farmers got to Inyo County from the Midwest, most of them had to master a new way of farming in arid lands. These farmers ultimately learned irrigation techniques and built two hundred miles of unlined canals.
1001 Natchts Ride
In the 1930s Indio coupled marketing their excellent date crop with Oriental fantasies borrowed from Hollywood and the short story collection “One Thousand and One Nights." High & Dry follows the evolution of this county's orientalism.
Thermal, CA fire
After a large-scale fire burned through a palm tree grove in Thermal, CA, all of the palms were assumed dead. But one pastor and his congregation prayed for a miracle.
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