For an instant, this small piece of a destroyed cargo container looked every bit like the bottom of the ocean. The water, the current, the barnacles on rocks, the swirling reeds, the living dark sandy bottom. As I walked along the ocean floor, weightless and slow, I kicked up debris, and they rained down around me like spent sparks from a fire.
The surface of the metal even felt like a barnacle-covered tide pool rock. I photographed it at an angle that made the shapes seem to flex and relax, tumble and flow with deep waves begun under other continents. I like the intangible sense of space in this photograph: blindness in murky water. There don't seem to be any fish.
Swirled Sheet Metal: Near Baker, CA, 2008
