Desert Dweller

• Photographer
  Daniel Skwarna

Desert Dweller is an analog long-form personal documentary project that explores the squatter community of Slab City - an off grid bunch of felons, artists, veterans, and impoverished Americans living on the remains of a WWII marine base in the Sonoran Desert, California. Slabbers are a motley crew. The year-round population is modest. Roughy fifty stay through July and August when temperatures are mercurial and even rattlesnakes seek the shade of campers. Their ability to endure inhuman conditions year after year is matched only by a shared distaste for the gridded boiler-plate of life.