making a painting, you take something and add to it. In photography, we take something and reduce it to its basic graphic element.” Using a large format view camera and carrying all the supplies that the system requires took a lot of time and strength to move it Cima Road Sunset over any distance. The images were accurate studies, but the technology was growing more and more constrained. About nine years ago Kathleen went all digital. She now uses a Canon 5Ds. It has freed her from the cumbersome equipment and allowed her to explore rougher and more remote terrain. Sometimes she thinks to herself, “I don’t deserve this camera,” but we at the Desert Light disagree. “Some photographers add shadows where there is no shadow,” Fischer says, “I think that’s cheating. I will occasionally remove a piece of trash or something like that from a frame, but I don’t add things.” Kathleen has made an art out of finding the graphic component in her landscape photography, finding its underlying truth. “I was once at a famous national park standing on the edge of a gorge at sunset. All the people there with me had their eyes trained on the sun as it sank below the horizon. I spent the time looking in the opposite direction because the light was so much more interesting in that direction.” These kinds of moments are essential to any great photography. When the photographer can look behind herself and find a new perspective, this is where we find Kathleen in Mojave for her show, “Life Reveals Itself.” Having traveled across the country to Mojave four times for her Residency, she arrived for the second trip in her trailer with her husband and a 90lb dog, Oliver and they spent two weeks at Hole in the Wall campground capturing images all over the preserve. “I have no lights, no tripod, just an eagerness to capture the infinite space of the west.” Her question to herself was, “Where do I start?” A Visit to Kelso and a conversation with a ranger at the station answered that question. The ranger said, “Mojave, unlike Death Valley, 8 THE DESERT LIGHT | Nov/Dec 2018