- Porter took a two-month drive down Mexico’s Baja Peninsula
in 1964. This trip was his preparation for photographing in the remote
Galápagos Islands, because Baja had a similar climate.
- In Baja, Porter saw open desert views with broad blue skies, pale
tans, yellow greens, and unusual plant shapes. The forms and colors
of the region were often very different from those he was used to
seeing in the eastern United States.
- He returned in the summer of 1966 to collect more images for a
Sierra Club book. The book, Baja California and the Geography of Hope
(1967), celebrated the area’s unusual plant life and supported
protection of the peninsula's desert ecology.
- Porter primarily photographed the landscape but also documented
abandoned churches and shrines in an effort to capture the character
of the region.
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