This photo series provides a portrait of the process of development that is quickly overtaking the desert peripheries of Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Los Angeles. Here in the suburban periphery, the landscape is scraped bare, re-sculpted, sealed, and then covered so as not to erode away. These systems of control prepare the land for habitation and also guard it against the natural forces of the desert environment. These photographs document the interactions and contrasts between this manmade environment and natural elements of the desert ecology that it resists and attempts to control.

Steve Smith
www.stevesmithphotography.net