Husk of Time: The Photographs of Victor Masayesva.

Husk of Time: The Photographs of Victor Masayesva, University of Arizona Press/103 pp./$40.00 (hb), $24.95 (sb).

Close your eyes and imagine deer antlers spinning in a circle, half-submerged in a shallow, unnaturally green pond. Accompanying this vision is a poem titled "Laughter to Crying--Duwanasaveh, Center of the Earth Ice Cream!" that reads, in part: "My truck bed liner is ripped out./The grit hails in gusts, stalling my forward motion./ The light so long in arriving away from the center of the universe."

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This surreal phenomenon is key to experiencing the imagery of Victor Masayesva Jr., a Hopi from northern Arizona. Masayesva uses digital manipulation, found objects, and floating ephemera to give substance to cultural concepts. Some pictures, particularly those featuring people, seem to be the CliffsNotes version of a lengthy movie, told from multiple perspectives. The fact that more than one point of view seems presented can be confusing, yet refreshing in the sense that the viewer is not bullied into a belief or opinion.

In one overtly Hopi image, pink ice cream cones wielded by the passing girl at the forefront of the image become larger parts of a fractal-like painted-desert background. In a memory, eating ice cream is as much a part of the mental landscape as the form or color of the mountains. Masayesva joins cultural heritage and digital techniques to achieve a new language and, in doing so, creates something wholly original.

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DAVID MILLER is a photographer and writer living in Phoenix.