In the town of Wonder Valley, California, a typical home is landscaped with a "garden" in the front yard. It thrives amidst the inhospitable and arid terrain of sand and rock principally because the contents of the "garden" include broken bottles, old lanterns, rocks, and tea kettles. Such is the Southern California landscape, where man-made structures are unsuccessfully integrated with the natural desert, documented by Berkeley photographer Tim Goodman in Rancho Deserta, on view in the Theater Gallery. Goodman's black-and-white photographs offer views of ordinary houses and their surroundings in communities whose names, such as Yucca Valley, Desert Shores, and Twentynine Palms, offer feeble attempts to glamorize an otherwise barren wasteland. In many images, Goodman looks at the jarring contrast between the distinct geometric forms of houses and the natural contours and patterns found in the desert flora and terrain. In other photographs, the homes bear more resemblance to ravaged structures at nuclear test sites than habitable edifices. Yet the reality is that these are people's homes; what becomes apparent in looking at the photographs is an economic impoverishment exacerbated by the natural conditions of the raw and beautiful desert. Each photograph, with its odd, sometimes startling, sometimes amusing juxtapositions, reinforces the power of the desert and our unsuccessful attempts to impose a human presence.
