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High & Dry

High & Dry is writer/historian Christopher Langley and photographer Osceola Refetoff's long-term collaboration exploring the deserts of the American West and the people who live there. The myth of 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 my 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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"Freeway Entrance." North of Lancaster, CA. 2012. | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
Writer/ photographer duo High & Dry travel through the alphabet avenues of Lancaster. They make a stop at the green energy Sierra SunTower station and come across the city's Landfill & Recycling Center.
"Curve at Horizon," infrared exposure. Garlock, CA. 2012. | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
Writer/ photographer duo High & Dry list locations with art that Burning Man attendees can explore on their way home from the annual week-long event.
Rafael Diaz Grave, Pioneer Cemetery. Infrared Exposure. Mt. Whitney in background far right. Lome Pine, CA. 2013. | Photo: Osceola Refetoff.
Lone Pine, CA has a killer view. Writer/ photographer duo High & Dry muse upon its cemeteries, and the people who long to be buried in them.
Writer/ photographer duo High & Dry step into Randsburg, CA: a town straddling the worlds of tourist destination, motorcycle Valhalla and diminished landscape where civilized specters remain.
Heading South on Highway 14 at California City Blvd., North of Mojave, CA. 2010.
The Eagles made the term "dark desert highway" iconic. Writer/ photographer duo High & Dry examine observing the California desert as a changing series of landscapes when traveling by road vs. experiencing the land outside of a moving vehicle with all ...
Wind Blown Sand - Infrared Exposure - Highway 136 North of Keeler, CA - 2013 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff
There are many names people in the desert lands around the world have for their constant companion: the wind.
The old Yellow Grade Road (dust storm on Owens Lake below) - Cerro Gordo, CA - 2014 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff
In Cerro Gordo, a deserted mining camp in the Sierra Nevadas that dates back to the mid 1870's, the howling spirits of the past continue to haunt the living.
Photographic views of the Owens Dry Lakebed , Lone Pine California,  spread out as Patricia Chidlaw creates her composition for a painting. | Photo: Osceola Refetoff
Unbeknownst to each other, L.A. photographer Osceola Refetoff and Santa Barbara realist painter Patricia Chidlaw were interpreting the same landscapes over the last five years.
"It's a Mess Without You!" Cinco, CA, 2011 | Photo: Osceola_Refetoff
High & Dry explores what a window -- as seen through the lens of a camera -- can relate to a viewer about memory and time.
Market Street: Post Office, Sheriff Station, Downtown Trona, Dawn, 2011 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff
At 100 years old, the severely rural desert town of Trona, CA, is dying. It is a dystopian Emerald City on the shore of a dry lake "at the end of the world."
Rain on Windshield - North of Randsburg, CA - 2010 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff
From stampeding thunderstorms and epic flash floods to virga, the rain that never falls to earth, some remarkable tales of desert precipitation.
William 'Burro' Schmidt Cabin (at left) and Abandoned Caretaker's House, Infrared Exposure, 2011 | Photo: Osceola Refetoff
High & Dry explores prospector William "Burro" Schmidt's half-mile long tunnel in Last Chance Canyon in the Mojave Desert. Schmidt spent thirty-two years single-handedly drilling his tunnel through solid granite.
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A partnership of writing and photography, "High & Dry" surveyes the legacy of human enterprise in the California desert.
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