Tim is one of the people I have been following for the last couple of years on a project investigating a water supply divided along racial lines in the US south-west. He is Diné, which is what the Navajo call themselves; it means “the people” in the Navajo language. He had often told me about this pinnacle, a short walk from his family’s house, where he likes to sit, taking in the light playing across the red exposed bones of the earth.
In Navajo Nation – the largest Indigenous Native American reservation in the US – a third of residents live without running water. Meanwhile, up until recently, Washington County in Utah – an Anglo community just 80 miles away – consumed the most water per person per day in the US, at 300 gallons, and paid the least for it. In Navajo Nation water use is about five to 10 gallons per person per day and yet the Diné pay the most for what they do get, and some rural families have to drive one or two hours to a water source.
When you get there, you sit in line for sometimes two or three hours, and then it takes half an hour to fill the tank in the back of your truck, before driving all the way home again. All that fuel, all that lost time, the wear and tear on your vehicle, having to do that up to four times a week in the summer because you need extra water for your animals as well as for your house.
Tim and his family told me what it was like to live dry
In 2023 I received a fellowship from the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder to study the history of water and Indigenous communities. During school breaks, I travelled to Washington County and the Navajo Nation to begin building relationships. And then from late 2023 and through to the following summer I made the photographs.
Towards the end of the project we finally made it up to Tim’s pinnacle. I was behind him as he climbed up. I had a long lens on my camera, and he started shouting. At first it was just sounds, and then he said: “This is me shouting into the wind, for change, and it all falls on closed ears.” It was a playful but powerful moment.
My projects are typically funded through grants – in this case the Center for Contemporary Documentation. This funding is central to my ability to slowly build knowledge and work in an analogue process. With time, I can build meaningful relationships that lead to characters who propel you through a story. Tim and his family were able to articulate a lot of the finer aspects of what it means to live dry.
I was born in Taiwan and am half Taiwanese, but I grew up on a farm on Colorado’s eastern plains surrounded by a community that I did not resemble. In the Navajo Nation, for the first time, I felt as if I found my people – rural westerners that are brown, and there’s some kindredness in that. In our shared sense of dark and dry humour, I found an innate sense of belonging on Navajo land.
Photograph: Elliot Ross/Miguel DeLeon
Elliot Ross’s CV
Born: 1990, Taipei, Taiwan
Trained: Savannah College of Art and Design, BFA Photography
Influences: “The New Topographics movement that included the photographers Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Nick Nixon and Emmett Gowin. I also deeply admire the work and commitment of Taryn Simon, Mike Brodie and Justine Kurland.”
High point: “Immersing myself for two years in the field and classroom learning about all things water in the American west – and then drawing on those experiences to create A Question of Balance. These two years were marked by months on foot in red rock wilderness, a dozen extended raft and plane trips, late nights in the university library and unforgettable heartfelt moments with my subjects that have now grown into profound friendships.”
Low point: “While on assignment early in my career, deep underground in a cave system called Rising Star in South Africa, a massive stalactite cleaved off the ceiling. It broke bones in both my feet and tore a hole in my hand. It took many hours to get myself out of the tight, sometimes vertical passages through excruciating pain. When I arrived at a rural hospital, I was wheeled into an operating room, though not sharing a common tongue, I did not know why I was being put to sleep. Turns out I needed a hand operation and a full blood transfusion due to sepsis.”
Top tip: “With courage, passion and a smile in your eyes, follow your curiosity to its far ends – trust that this simple act will lead to pictures only you can make.”
