Desert Notes by Samantha Jensen

Desert Notes, a new photobook by artist Samantha Jensen, retraces the route of the 19th-century Survey of the Colorado River of the West through portraiture, landscape, still life, and scanned journal entries from the artist’s travels.

Blending documentary and constructed approaches, the work foregrounds the tension between visibility and erasure, favoring close attention as a form of care and resistance. The book is carefully sequenced and includes journal entries written during Jensen’s drive through the American West, tracing her movement and offering insight into her process.

Samantha Jensen (b. 1997) is a Brooklyn-based artist from California whose practice spans photography and self-portraiture, drawing inspiration from figures such as Gina Pane, Carla Williams, and Hannah Wilke. Her work examines intimacy and fragility, the familial and the environmental, and the collision between personal and public histories, speaking to a sparing, sometimes removed view of intimacy, and the mirroring often found within relationships, either between individuals or the spaces they inhabit. Alongside her artistic practice, Jensen works as an art writer, contributing to publications including T Magazine MENA, GQ Middle East, and Impulse Magazine, where she has primarily profiled female artists across the region.

Publisher: Makan
Editor: Ibi Ibrahim
Designer: Bastien Forato
Softback: 160 pages
Illustrations: 162 images
ISBN: 979-8-234-03705-3
First Edition

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