PRESS RELEASE My current, growing body of work consists of about twenty constructed photographs, many of which take place in the desert at a site in eastern Washington that I found three years ago and has by its gravity kept me going back.  The place, for me, has a psychologically charged but neutral energy, like an unformed dream or empty canvas waiting to be acted upon. For inspiration, in addition to the desert, I turn to books:  epic novels, epic histories, and fiction rich in visual imagery.  I especially appreciate thinkers who address the grandest of human themes, which are also my themes:  grandeur and the ordinary, struggle and futility, illusion and disillusionment, meaningfulness, age, and death.  Working in the desert has come to be a form of meditation.  Days are spent, sometimes with a crew but more often in solitude, wordlessly driving, carrying supplies, erecting structures and sets, and studying the slow progress of the sun overhead and its all-powerful, shape-changing, comfort-giving and –taking effects.  My state of mind while I work can range from joy and contentedness to emptiness and doubt, and I believe these shifting emotions, intensified by an intense place, carry through into the best of my eventual photographs.  Chris Engman