The Edge Effect

While hiking and driving the areas in California’s Joshua Tree National Park, where the low Sonoran desert meets the high Mojave desert, Daniel Kukla caught glimpses of the border space created by the meeting of distinct ecosystems in juxtaposition, referred to as the Edge Effect in the ecological sciences. To document this unique confluence of terrains, Daniel hiked out a large mirror and painter’s easel into the wilderness and captured opposing elements within the environment. Using a single visual plane, this series of images unifies the play of temporal phenomena, contrasts of color and texture, and natural interactions of the environment itself.