Travels in the American Southwest.

On the licence plates in New Mexico it reads: 'The Land of Enchantment.' And that is it, by God! There's a huge rectangle which embraces parts of four states--Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona--and which is nothing but enchantment, sorcery, illusionismus, phantasmagoria. Perhaps the secret of the American continent is contained in this wild, forbidding and partially unexplored territory. It is the land of the Indian par excellence. Everything is hypnagogic, chthonian and super-celestial. Here Nature has gone gaga and dada. Man is just an irruption, like a wart or a pimple. Man is not wanted here. Red men, yes, but then they are so far removed from what we think of as man that they seem like another species.

--Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

It is to see our past that thousands of tourists come to New Mexico: archaeologists, geologists, antiquarians, lovers of whatever is old or out-of-date or mysterious because of old age. Our history invites the photographer.

--J. B. Jackson, A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time

At the age of sixteen or so years, I bought a richly illustrated book for my father's birthday that celebrated wonders of nature throughout the world. I consumed the book, ostensibly a gift for my father' birthday, with eagerness, particularly the chapter on the Grand Canyon. For the most part I skipped over the text and looked at the vibrantly picturesque photographs that filled the book. The images seemed to offer the promise of adventurous experience beyond my home in suburban Hertfordshire, twenty miles north of London in England. At that point my travels abroad had been limited to family camping holidays in France, so when I came across a cache of discarded National Geographic magazines in the art classroom at my school, I was filled with a romantic longing to travel to places and experience cultures that were further removed from home. I cut out images from the magazines and juxtaposed them with my own poetry in what I wish I could report was a thrilling experiment with ekphrasis in the early Padget canon. Alas the poor meter, strained rhymes, and self-absorption of my writing were only too familiar to the legionary teachers of literature who have struggled to say complimentary words when pressed to read their adolescent pupils' heartfelt attempts at poetry. Later I would look back with discomfort at the hours I had spent attempting to refine those often crudely written stanzas. So too, after reading photographic criticism, would I learn to call into question the appeal of the imagery that I had come to prize in magazines, books, and other sources, such as the Sierra Club calendar and a pack of greeting cards illustrated with Ansel Adams's photographs. Nevertheless, such images did act as a powerful lure to hike through the Grand Canyon a few years after I purchased my father's book. And, I confess, the picturesque photography that continues to fill the pages of new coffee-table books on the Southwest and the pages of publications such as Arizona Highways and National Geographic still have a powerful sway over my imagination.