In a temperate climate the process of death and decay is nearly invisible, hidden beneath a web of plant life that springs up almost overnight to cover and absorb anything which dies. In the desert, death is on display everywhere one looks. When a plant or animal dies in the dry desert climate, the carcass is often preverved for months or even years. Its breakdown is a gradual process as the remains are baked by the sun, often assuming the color and texture of primitive fired pottery.
The saguaro cactus, which is the visually dominant plant in the low deserts of Arizona and Sonora, is particularly beautiful in death. The dried skin of a dead saguaro has a form and texture like nothing else in nature, it is more like polished sheets of stone or clay than like a plant.
On the black lava fields of northern Sonora, the skeletal remains of saguaros and other cactus look like drawings or cut-outs, the white bones outlined against the dark lava rock.
I often photograph these remains using Polaroid film. I allow the film to age and deteriorate before processing, as a means to further reinforce the metaphor of beauty found in the ashes, the myth of the Phoenix.