A desert shrub doesn’t call attention to itself. Shrub Portraits treats these modest, often-overlooked plants as portrait subjects—photographed head-on using natural and studio light, composed to emphasize their form, posture, and quiet presence. Started during a 2010 residency at Joshua Tree National Park and continued throughout the Southwestern United States, the project began through daily walks, where attention shifted from iconic vistas and fanciful rocks to the low, wiry figures scattered across the landscape. Though the title refers to shrubs, the series includes a range of desert flora—subshrubs, annuals, perennials, and flowering plants—chosen for their scale, presence, and relationship to place.Photographed primarily in bloom, these plants are not ornamental; they are tenacious, deeply adapted to scarcity. Shrub Portraits reflects on resilience without drama—rooted in the slow endurance of desert life. The work draws quiet inspiration from the ancient King Clone creosote ring, estimated at 11,700 years old and one of the oldest organisms on Earth. It proposes that survival, too, can be its own form of majesty.