In The Shadow Of The Valley

2013

A photography/multi-media project that started when my dad, Kirk Ham moved to California in 2012. He was living “up the mountain” from Yucca Valley in a small town called Landers. Kirk moved from New Orleans, LA to start fresh after divorcing my step-mother. At the time he was employed as a bartender at the Yucca Valley Elks 2314 Club, where he was also a member. These pictures are inspired by the place my dad lived and worked at a transitionary time in his life.

White painted Christmas tree.
Stone sculpture of a swan with it's wings up, in a grass bed.
Strips of shadow and light on a wall with two skinny cactuses leaning on the wall.
A side view of a military vehicle.
A stone sculpture of a fox sitting under a table in the desert.
A red outhouse in the desert
The top of a pointy tree, with two wires running in front.
Aplastic sculpture of a white horse head.
A man in the desert swinging his arms behind him.
A sand-rail vehicle driving up a large sand dune in the dessert.
An elk head on a wall.
Old photographs of military men and boys on a white and red striped wall.
A gold statue of Buddha in a structure.
A man stanfding in front of a wooden fence.
Two blue tokens lying on asphalt that read "Good for one drink" and "Yucca Valley Elks 2314".
A shotgun shell on the ground.
An old television in the desert with bullet holes in it.
A mining hole in the desert.
A poster of Robert Redford.
A man holding a pool cue in front of a window.
A portrait of a man with white hair and a mustache.
Old portraits of three young girls painted on wood with flowers.
A man with long pink hair and a long pink beard wearing a tie dyed shirt.
A sword stuck in a rock in the desert.
Digital illustration of a structure.
Digital illustration of a structure.
A vhs tape, a tire and other trash on the ground in the desert.
Digital illustration of a structure.
A man doing tai chi in a wooden room.
A structure behind tall grass.
Koi fish under frozen water.
A donkey running by a car in the desert.
Digital illustration of a structure.
A man holding an automatic rifle wearing sandals in the desert.
A woman wearing a pink shirt.
A dream catcher hanging on a door.
A dirty spoon laying in sand.
A fake cut-off arm lying o a pool table with two pool balls.
A palm leave floating in water.
A man wearing a baseball cap with light and shadow striking his face.
A grey dog sitting under a bench.
A man looking out into the distance.
A bush in the desert.
Someone in a Easter Bunny costume.
A woman wearing purple Easter Bunny ears.
Digital illustration of a structure and a man.
A man standing behind a bar.

It has always been there.

Forever eluding me,

Waiting for me,

Always on my mind.

You where here before me.

And I was you before you knew me.

Are we the sum of our fore-bearers?

Were we here before?

Can you feel it in this place?

In these rocks,

In these sands,

We were here before.

Can you hear it?

In the cosmic noise of time,

Our own voices.

Through centuries, through millennia, 

Calling, to embrace it.

 Magical Passes

From totems and strange representations of life...

to magical and energetic places in the desert, these photographs attempt to capture some of the strangeness of this place my father chose to move to. In and around Yucca Valley is a barren land, but along with the rest of California it is a place where people seek a new life, or look for a place to retire. In this arid place few things survive. There seems to be many man-made representations of life, but it is unclear if these representations are totems or if they are reminders that life exists someplace else, in some other place not like the desert. Or are these totems and representations just stand-ins for what is not there, what has been lost or left behind?

In 2017 Kirk was diagnosed with leukemia and was given only a few months to live. He fought hard but a short 9 months later he was gone. This project is the beginning of another long-term project to tell more of the story of my father’s life and to learn to cope with the loss of him.

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