Jono Melamed

96% of Texas is privately owned, which makes it no surprise that folks have found themselves so goddamn up in arms when faced with the potential defilement of the tiny bit of it that happens to have remained public. In a land of cattle guards and barbed wire fencing, the big bend region is an anomaly, a wild and rugged stretch of Chihuahuan Desert that has somehow managed to resist the plague of modernity. It is a big and formidable place, humbling in its scale and consistently exhibiting the kind of wild indifference that can only be found in the desert. As you move through the park and the wildlands on its periphery, it is made abundantly clear what kind of world we traded to accommodate our misguided human desires. It’s difficult, dare I say impossible, to walk through this landscape and not find yourself resenting the arbitrary boundaries that have been built at its edges. In all of its milky teal magnificence, the Rio Grande snakes its way between our nation and our southern neighbors in Mexico. It is not only the lifeblood of both the human and animal communities along its banks, but also the pulse of the entire region. Be it a river, spring, or dingy dusty pot hole, there is nothing in the desert that is more powerful than water and that fact is baked into this landscape around every big damn bend of The Rio. On my first morning in the area, I watched a beaver gently swim downriver while the sun crept over The Chisos Mountains. She was quiet and playful, delicately spinning in circles as she bounced from country to country, flaunting her limited understanding of our terrestrial politics. As she floated out of sight, I couldn’t help but wonder what we think we’re protecting when we carve a place like this into pieces. I don’t care what side of the aisle you’re on, or who you’ve been voting for as of late, if you can’t agree that this place needs to stay intact, then you aren’t paying attention. If the only way to protect our way of life is to the destroy the sanctity of the wild spaces that make this country worth living in, then maybe our way of life isn’t worth protecting. No goddamn wall belongs in this place. Not now… Not ever.

I recently hid a tab of acid in a Jim Harrison book but forgot which pages it lives between so whenever I go looking for it, I have to sift through Jim’s viscera to find it. When I do, I move it to two new pages that I will also forget and then back into the guts I’ll have to go. I’m not sure why, but somehow this ritual makes me feel better about having a national parks pass with our president’s face on it in the glove-box. I haven’t eaten LSD in years, but it drifts into my mind from to time and so I check on it to make sure it’s right where I left it. I will then forget it exists while also forgetting where I left it. Many people that love me will recognize that this is how I treat all of my oldest, dearest friends. I’ve held onto this work pretty tightly, more tightly than I hold onto most things. I think that’s what we’re supposed to do when we accidentally create something that we love. I’m sure my mother would agree with that. For the last year or so, I’ve been using the wet plate collodion process to document the public lands that are being threatened by the current iteration of our political apparatus. This process is what our first photographers brought with them into the frontier and, in doing so, they created images that completely shifted the scale of the American experience. To me, this work has served as a tether through time to previous moments in history where our politicians were still in the business of building monuments instead of tearing them down. As we stand in the face of the the largest threat that our public lands have ever known, using this historic process has felt like not only a necessary progression of my practice as an artist but also an important opportunity for me to stand in gentle dissent as a dirtbag. 
 I can’t be counted on for much but you can count on me to keep throwing my tiny purple truck into the wilderness in the simple service of silver. I am not one to stand on the street screaming about much of anything, but I’ll take to the wild and bellow like a bull in the only way I know how. Tintypes made in Bears Ears, Grand Staircase Escalante, and Ironwood National Monuments as well as Big Bend National Park.

I haven’t been posting lately because the general turbulence of the world has left me a bit more overwhelmed than usual and I’ve had a hard time writing about… well, anything and everything. So, fuck it… no grandiose sentiment or lofty verbiage. Here are 14 moments where I knew exactly why I was grateful to be alive.

Just a couple of sweet hobos. Tintypes made at my studio in Tucson.

We all have our own definition of home, but mine lives within the feeling that wells up in my chest every time I drive into this sandstone expanse after some time away. It isn’t a logical thing and it respects no human vocabulary, it simply quickens the blood and calms the rest of me, like any good lover should. I’ve reached the part of the season where I can’t see past this horizon, where all roads lead back to the geography of the space between my bones — and as I start plotting my pilgrimage north, there isn’t a goddamn thing that doesn’t feel possible. I’ve never known a longing like this one and I’m a better man for it. I wish you all a love like the one that I share with this place.

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. One could spend a lifetime talking about this place and never say nearly enough about its beauty. At close to 1.9 million acres, Grand Staircase Escalante is the largest National Monument in the lower 48 and is a remarkably remote wilderness. Within its boundaries, one is presented with an utterly preternatural playground— a place so wild and unyielding, that it was one of the last parts the country to be mapped. Established in ‘96 by President Clinton, the monument was reduced in size by nearly half in 2017 by President Trump, a move that was reversed in 2021 during the Biden administration. This time around, the congressional criminals that are in favor of liquidating our public lands are taking a different approach and introducing legislation that would overturn the monument’s management plan. If they succeed, it would not only leave the monument exposed to mining, drilling, and harmful OHV use, but also set a dangerous precedent for other public lands. We simply cannot let this happen. This landscape feels like a wound, like a collection of lacerations and bruises from a lucid dream that someone else had. Unfinished and ever-changing, every moment that passes works to gouge this beauty from the Earth as the choreography of time flaunts its indifference. It’s in places like this that we’re taught how to breathe — how to drown ourselves in silence and revel in our insignificance. It’s in places like this that we are treated to truly untrammeled wilderness, an integral part of our natural heritage as Americans and a crucial resource to any and all human beings. It’s in places like this that we’re reminded how an unfinished landscape, much like ourselves, is an exercise in proving just how beautiful a wound can be. To learn more about what you can do to help support the continued stewardship of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, follow @grandstaircasepartners and @protectwildutah . Tintypes of various sizes made in Southern Utah.

Sedona Tintype popup @rovangceramics 5/1- 4-9pm and 5/2- most of the day. …and just like that, my studio season in Tucson is coming to a close. It’s been a fun season, full of many new faces and a bunch of fun events, and as I wrap things up I’m feelin’ awfully grateful for the folks came by the studio or my booth to take a seat and make a moment. Thank YOU. Truly. Anyhoo, I’ve got one more event in Arizona before I pack up and head north and that event is in Sedona at my buddy Rovang‘s place (@rovangceramics ). Friday night (5/1) we will be having an opening for first Friday where I’ll be showing some new work as well as making Tintype portraits on site. @cactuspup will be showing some of his oil paintings and @alex.rovang will be also be showing some of his ceramic work. The work will be on display through the weekend and I will be making tintypes Saturday (5/2) for most of the day as well. Come on by and hang out. Maybe make a tintype? It’ll be a good time with some good folks. If I don’t see ya, then I’ll see ya next season! Booking info in my bio.

Just a hint of something from the past. 8x10 tintype made outside of Tucson in 2023.

May 1st - 2026 ~ First Friday Event 3 featured artists : @yoneland @cactuspup @rovangceramics Doors open 4pm TinType studio portraits will be taken live on site during the event. Book your time immediately as slots fill quickly. Portraits with Jono scheduled first come first serve via a link in his bio [ @yoneland ] About the artists: Jono Melamed is a photographer living and working in the American Southwest. Through the use of both modern techniques and the historic wet plate collodion process, he creates portraits and landscapes that feel untethered from time while exploring themes of cultural memory, legacy, and our relationship to the dirt beneath our feet.  He is currently working to use the historical wet plate process to document the public lands that are at risk due to our ever-shifting political climate. Jesse Greenwood is a Tucson, AZ-based painter whose work specifically seeks to examine how we navigate orienting ourselves to our discernment of reality in a cultural, emotional, and spiritual context. Greenwood’s work is an interest in embodying the intersection between the human condition and the anecdote of color arranged on a flat surface— an intersection of suggested reality, of perception beyond the periphery, and a resonance of a life beyond purely physical depiction. Greenwood’s paintings are invitations to consider that perhaps a memory’s reflection can be as interesting as a supposed reality, to consider what it might look like to view one’s experience through a less-literal lens. Alex Rovang is a ceramics artist residing in Sedona, Arizona. The May 1st show will be an opportunity for him to unveil an evolution of his ongoing southwestern cactuses project to now include wood fired pieces from two separate wood firings taking place in Arizona at @daranch_vineyards and @cochisecollege as well as new iterations of his matte black sculptural work, some of which featuring glass artwork from @themeltingpoint Jordan Ford.

…and just like that, spring seems to have sprung down here in the desert. It’s got me feelin’ a lot of feelings but what else is new? Today, I’m feeling awfully grateful for all y’all that have taken a seat with me at an event this season. It’s a silly thing that I do and it’s made much sillier by every single person that takes an interest in my nonsense, even if just for a moment. Thank you, Tucson, for showing up and supporting local weirdos while we do the things that we do. It means more than you know. Anyhoo. Next up, we’ve got @desertairmarket this weekend over at @tucsonhopshop . It’s a cute and very thoughtfully put together lil’ shindig chock full of Tucson’s finest weirdos and craftspeople and I’ll of course be makin’ tintype portraits. It’ll be a good time. Promise. Join us this Saturday, March 7th from 11-5 at @tucsonhopshop . Come sit for a tintype, peruse some local art, or have a pint and heckle me while I work. Whatever’s clever. Snag a spot at the link in my bio.

Marie on her land in Port Townsend, Washington. 2024.

Jaimin at my studio in Tucson. Thanks for stoppin’ by, bud.