Leonard Knight of Salvation Mountain

"I really love it here. I think the freedom of this place is just so beautiful.
To me, I wouldn’t move for $10 million, unless I had to.
So I’m contented here in the desert, and I’m living where I want to live.
And I think good gets better.
And I think those great big tanks there were the sewer plant for the Marine base in World War II"

Some may recognize the words of Leonard Knight from the movie Into The Wild where Chris and Tracy take a walk to Salvation Mountain and meet him. In March I had the pleasure of taking my own walk to Salvation Mountain and meet the legend.

Leonard Knight

Leonard Knight is a joy and an inspiration, just as passionate and quirky in real life as on screen. I spoke with him for a while and his passion for his Salvation Mountain and for his God are very infectious. His work, life, passion and mission is a never ending process of creating Salvation Mountain as a tribute to his God. It’s really just a lot of paint on a mountain built of everything from clay to car doors and telephone poles but his dedication and passion lifts it to something special.

It was a slow hot day with few visitors, Leonard tells of days with hundreds of people. The desert sun was scorching, the clouds were spectacular and the wind a warm companion. The air tasted hot and dusty as I ate my lunch sandwich sitting on top of Salvation. Leonard then took me on a tour and gave me a handful of postcards telling me to "spread the love in Denmark, tell people about my work, about love and my mountain". He is a weathered old desert dweller who has seen his fair share of the desert sun. Here’s my portrait of Leonard and part of his desert home.

Slab City

Salvation mountain resides at Slab City, also of Into The Wild fame. Slab City is just a bunch of caravans out in the desert on concrete slabs, leftovers from a Marine base. There is not much to it but I can see what Leonard mean by stating"the freedom of this place is so beautiful". I was there on a Thursday and wish I had stayed for the Friday outdoor concert as seen in the movie. With a little more guts for shooting people I would have liked to do portraits of the characters living here. Instead, some awesome clouds offered the chance of a wide Slab City panorama:

Into The Wild

I tend to get somewhat obsessive about my…obsessions one could say. I have over the past two years watched the beautiful movie Into The Wild twenty times, read the moving book ten times and listened to the great Eddie Vedder and Michael Brook soundtracks a million times over. Christopher McCandless’ quest, passion and great adventure somewhat mirrors mine and my feelings, and he completely changed my life post-mortem.

Chris, his story, the book, the movie, the soundtrack still means very much to me and there is great strength, comfort and inspiration for me in passionate people like Chris and Leonard. Attempting to slightly moderate my spectacularism (Douglas Coupland’s word for loving extreme situations) I am now attempting to create and live my nomad story, not a copy of the Alexander Supertramp story.  Still, I had to visit Slab City and Salvation Mountain when I passed by the Salton Sea back in March. Some elements and arcs of a story came together for me and it was special for me, somewhat moving to be standing there. As if several versions of me caught up and merged into one.

– ∞ –

Tech: All images including the portrait shot using my Canon 17-40mm L lens, it does actually work as a portrait lens in a pinch and my copy is razor sharp (except for the corners of course). The panorama is stitched. All images have received my ‘harsh desert’ Photoshop process but they needed very little, the conditions here are already very harsh desert!

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Nomad. Photographer. Traveler. Wanderer. Dreams become reality.

Nomad. Basically means either a pastoral nomad, moving his herd every day in search of food, or a hunter gatherer nomad moving with the wildlife. Bruce Chatwin was forever fascinated by nomadic life and once spent years and years writing a book about his own thesis on ‘the nomadic alternative’. This brick of a book was according to his publisher almost unreadable and Chatwin ended up instead traveling Patagonia and writing ‘In Patagonia’. The rest is history.

I have spent the past 4 months attempting to realise my own Nomadic Alternative. On Monday the 23rd of November dreams become reality as I board my plane to freely travel the world, photograph, experience, write and live! New life. The road is the home. Nomadic Alternative.

I now own basically what I can carry. Well, carry with some help as there is an awful lot of camera gear, laptop, books and clothes. Still, my life and possessions is reduced to a mobile state and I have no home but the world, the road. Nomadic alternative. These are truly exciting times! Complete freedom and total liberation! I do know how lucky people consider me to be and I will live up to it.  But I have basically created this situation myself and I believe everyone can do this or parts of this. Most of what tie us down are in our minds!

While I do call it my Nomadic Alternative, like Bruce Chatwin would say, that is a truth and a half. Chatwin liked to say he was travelling with just a notebook and a backpack. In reality he carried a whole home with him, including a ton of books. In reality I will be jumping from base to base as a place to sleep is always quite nice! My first base will be with friends in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. A dear friend from Copenhagen will also join me in Chiang Mai and together we will explore Asia for the next 4 months. Thailand, Malaysia, Borneo, perhaps Burma, Laos and a little gday to Australia as well could be on the menu. No plans, except to live! photograph, experience, travel and be free, free!

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – Tolkien

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." -Chris McCandless

The road is home

Let us conclude with the road, in this case a lovely red dirt road from Karijini, Australia. Red and blue dawn at it’s finest. Into the Wild.

Karijini Red and Blue Dawn
© Flemming Bo Jensen Photography

If you know some great photography locations in Thailand – and Asia – I would love to hear about them! See you on the road.

Sands of Time. Turn the hourglass and next stop Malaysia and Borneo

“The principal joy of human life comes from encounters with new experiences. Hence there is no greater joy than having a new horizon every day”.

The words are Christopher McCandless but are also very Chatwin-esque. I wholeheartedly agree. It is why I love travelling and photographing so much. The promise of a new horizon, new photos, new experiences.

Sands of time has once again run through the hourglass as I bid goodbye to Australia and head for new horizons in Malaysia and Borneo. The downside to these constant new experiences is they also constantly end. It is a rollercoaster of highs and lows. After leaving what quickly felt as a home in Namibia in early May, I now leave what feels like home in Broome, Western Australia. As always feel a little sad having encountered yet another end. But new horizons, new photographs, new experiences await. Would not want it any other way. Rather the highest of highs and lowest of lows than never-ending mediocrity!

In Malaysia and Borneo I am shooting landscapes for United Plantations in and around their palm oil plantations. A visit to see the orangutans are also planned, promises to be rather magical. I do not know if I will have internet access but hope to post a report or two.

I illustrate the Sands of Time with this image from Namibia. A very strong wind is fiercely whipping the sand dunes in the setting sun, creating a magic moment in time on a Wednesday afternoon:

Randomness

• Camel Man! You must read Rod’s super funny CAKE09 blog post about Camel Man & yours truly. I was planning to write the story as well but Rod’s tells it better than anyone. “Albert” is my CAKE09 nickname, something to do with Albert Namatjira (famous aboriginal artist).
  Casey has also posted some great CAKE09 shots on his blog.
• Still on CAKE09 expedition, in Karijini we had to one day do a re-fuel and shopping trip to the mining town of Tom Price. Now, in Tom Price they were setting up a large fair with carousels, rides, etc. As Rod and I pay for our food at the Coles Supermarket the Coles Woman says excited “oooooh are you guys from the fair?”. “Ehhhh…what?” I say and laugh. “We look like we’re from a fair?”.
• I spent a day working for Beaches of Broome backpackers (my home in Broome) shooting new photos for their website. With little preparation, no budget, no models, no props, no flash or light of any kind and me, the landscape photographer, the conditions were challenging. Necessity being the mother of all inventions, Michael (staff from Beaches) and I simply hi-jacked 3 backpackers who agreed to model and posed them in rooms, having breakfast, riding scooters, at the bar etc. and I fired away hoping for something useable. Was lots of fun and a few of the photos are even halfway ok. Joe McNally need not worry though! Will let you know when some of our work is online at the Beaches website.