
Gunfight,
Mini Hollywood

Almería Western Film Festival 2016, Tabernas

Entrance,
Fort Bravo/Texas Hollywood

Ruins of the El Condor Fort, Tabernas

Justice of the Peace,
Fort Bravo/Texas Hollywood

View from the Alcazaba, La Chanca, Almería

Oasis, Rambla Viciana, Tabernas

Girl and Cowboy,
Fort Bravo/Texas Hollywood

Wanted,
Mini Hollywood

Cortijo del Fraile, Níjar

Playa del Algarrobico, Carboneras

The Yellow Rose, Mini Hollywood

Espectaculo Western Show, Mini Hollywood

Fort Bravo,
Fort Bravo/Texas Hollywood

Ruins of Flagstone, La Calahorra

Card Game,
Fort Bravo/Texas Hollywood

The Ultimate Western,
Fort Bravo/Texas Hollywood

Ruins of the El Condor Fort, Tabernas

Hills,
Western Leone
Consider Mark’s wide angle view of the cardboard-box, faux-town which surrounds SImi’s ranch house, all set against the sweep of majestic hills which once framed Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda. It is an image simultaneously foolish, ironic, inspirational.
If only the imposing structure – built, allegedly, from lumber left over from Orson Welles’ CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT - had been left alone in the desert, as Simi intended it. In Sergio Leone’s masterpiece, its loneliness is its point – its creator’s grand folly. Do loneliness or folly count, when tourism is at stake?
There are few people in Mark’s austere photographs — a lone dude crosses the “El Paso” street, and once, mysteriously, we see a mini-skirted girl saluted by a galloping cowboy. Mostly, the desert he depicts is still, and silent.
This silence is another beauty of the Desert of Tabernas, and the remaining wild country of the Zona Verde in Almeria. What sounds do these photographs inspire? The wind, of course. The animals who lived in and around these buildings. Coconuts for horse’s hooves. And the waves, of course, crashing on a deserted shore below an abandoned, mega-hotel.

Dirt Road,
Parque Natural de Cabo de Gata
