Photographer Antone Dolezal combines his own photographs with found materials to uncover Southwest mythologies. Stay tuned to the end of this interview for some cosmic NASA field recordings.

Nevada and California's deserts are thick with folklore and a history of photographic exploration. While playing host for the "manifestly destined" work of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographers like Ansel Adams, Laura Gilpin, and Timothy O' Sullivan, the regions were also home to passing transients and utopian communities. Likely because of their magical topography, these areas are often mythologized as a "gateway to the cosmos."

For the past few years, this has inspired Antone Dolezal's Part of Fortune and Part of Spirit, a series of photographs, texts and found images that play stories from these regions off classic science fiction tropes and contemporary religious tales. Unsettling black and white portraits volley against lush color landscapes and sci-fi movie-stills, and viewing them creates hybrid pangs of disorientation and nostalgia. Itching with confusion, I emailed Dolezal for some clarity. 

Interview by Jon Feinstein