The photographer is a 60-year-old man who goes missing at Grandview Point (50 miles from Abbey’s ranger station) and turns up dead after a rescue mission. Although this amateur photographer only appears as a corpse, the man’s nephew organizes a search party comprising Abbey, his colleagues Merle McRae and Floyd Bence, and his brother Johnny Abbey. The occasion of death allows Abbey, feeling lucky to be alive, to relish the environment in some richly sensuous language, furthering his argument that the desert uniquely inspires wonder. Though search party mocks the photographer callously as they carry his bloated corpse back to the truck, the man inspires Abbey with some important thoughts on death—namely that the open desert is a much better place to die than a hospital, as such a place invites the inevitable return of human energy back into the earth, where it belongs. These thoughts brought about by the dead photographer further illustrate Abbey’s view that humans are a natural part of the landscape.
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The Photographer Character Timeline in Desert Solitaire
The timeline below shows where the character The Photographer appears in Desert Solitaire. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Dead Man at Grandview Point
...a ranger), Merle McRae, Floyd Bence, and some policemen, to search for the man: a photographer who left his car on the road three days ago. Though the man’s nephew describes...
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...mile from the road, under the cover of a juniper on a ridge, the dead photographer is bloated like a balloon. When the others arrive, the two brothers try to trace...
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...seldom traversed labyrinth of canyons known as The Maze. Abbey wants to congratulate the dead photographer on his noble death—it was good luck to die out in the open, alone, instead...
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...leaky the corpse is, and how hungry and tired they are. If they’d known the photographer, maybe they could be reverent—but they didn’t, so they don’t care. It’s not that Abbey...
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...Venus low on the horizon. He sees hawks in the sky and imagines the dead photographer from that perspective: he sees himself through the birds’ cruel eyes. While fantasizing from the...
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