Biosphere 2

Author's Comments

The first time I drove up from Tucson into the foothills of the Catalinas and saw the pyramids appear through the desert scrub, I laughed out loud. There is something genuinely strange about Biosphere 2. It does not belong to the landscape it sits in, and that is exactly the photograph. Glass and white steel rising out of mesquite and prickly pear, the mountains behind it going purple in the late light, the whole thing looking like a set piece from a film about a future that never quite arrived. I have found the most rewarding hour to be the last one before sunset in November or early March, when the sun drops at an angle that lights the western faces of the pyramids without flattening them. The glass panels go gold and then briefly orange, and if you position yourself south of the main structure you can get the reflection of the Catalinas in the panes themselves. That is the frame I keep chasing. A landscape inside a landscape. The detail work is its own pursuit. The geometry of the space frames is relentless and beautiful, and a longer lens isolates patterns that the wide shot loses entirely. I usually walk the exterior path twice, once for the architectural wide and once for the close work, and the second pass is almost always the better one. Take the tour if you have time. The interior biomes are worth seeing once. But for photography, the grounds at golden hour are where this place gives you something you cannot make anywhere else.

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