CHRISTINA SHELBY
Photography
About
As a California native, Christina Shelby has spent many hours exploring the trails, Mojave riverbed, ghost towns, and abandoned places around her high desert home. From these experiences, she developed a deep love of the wild places and deserted areas among the suburban communities in which she lived. Christina Shelby holds a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University as well as a Bachelor of Arts from University of California at Riverside. She teaches photography and art classes at Victor Valley College. Christina Shelby and her husband live in Apple Valley, California along with their dog, Ollie, and three cats.
I’ve called the Mojave Desert home for the better part of my adult life. Location, I believe, shapes a person. My independence and imagination grew from wandering the empty spaces around my home as a child. Now, older, there is a sense of solace and freedom from walking along the seasonal Mojave River or traveling down dusty dirt roads of mining ghost towns. The wide-open desert horizon clears my head and invigorates my spirit. Through the lens of an old film camera, I am equally transported to new places as the light sculpts form and space. Photography becomes a vehicle to investigate. Through framing and camera angle and focus, my vision also shapes the location. In the fraction of a second, it becomes a scene that will not exist quite in the same way again.