Between light and dark, there is a transient state when the sun sits just below the horizon and casts an enveloping glow of light and colour.
A measured pause between what comes before and what follows. In poetry and music, this is defined as a “mora”, the smallest unit of measurable time.
That is what these photographs pursue. Not the sand or the sky, but the interval where they merge. The experience of floating in a void of light and colour, with little sense of direction. Walls of gleaming white gypsum act as a mirror to the vast desert sky. A landscape stripped of every familiar reference point, reduced to nothing but luminance, colour, and shape.
For him, all effort is directed towards this brief moment. Rising well before dawn, hiking deep into the dune field in the dark, then moving quickly to find angles where everything in the physical world aligns at the same harmonic frequency.
The project began in 2018, after his first visit to this dune field in southern New Mexico, the largest of its kind in the world. Over time, he developed a deeper understanding of the environment, identifying when and where these moments of mora occur. Armed with a special use permit issued by the National Park Service, he returned in 2026 to enter the dune field at times when the park is closed to the public. When these images were made, he was the only person in the 250-square-mile expanse.
About Todd Dominey
Todd Dominey is a landscape photographer whose work mainly focuses on remote, untouched regions of the American West—environments that have evolved over millions of years without human influence or impact, transportive places where civilisation plays no role.
Alongside his photography, he creates experiential videos of the environments where his images are made, as well as educational content for an audience across social media, email, and online video platforms.
Dominey’s professional career was originally in design, first in print and then in digital. An early pioneer of web design, he authored books and developed interactive works for a number of companies. In the 2010s, he designed and developed two photo publishing software applications, SlideShowPro and Koken, both of which gained a large following. He concluded his design career leading design at Mailchimp.
Afterwards, he returned his full attention to a longstanding interest in photography and began creating his own images—a chance to learn a new visual language, explore unfamiliar terrain, and refine his photographic voice. [Official Website]
