Dr. John A. Wilson, the photographer Sarah Wilson’s grandfather was a paleontologist. John A. Wilson was a paleontologist who traveled to some of the world’s most remote and rugged terrains.
West Texas desert. He gave her three boxes of Kodachrome slide pictures he had taken during his digs in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s.
The artist tells now, “I think he gave me these slides because I was traveling out to West Texas myself and photographing landscapes,” She recognized the places where he worked and made discoveries. She writes in her book dig that she stood where he once did, decades later.
In 2008, at the age 93 of Dr. Wilson, he was hospitalized for pneumonia. His granddaughter showed him a photo she had taken in Big Bend National Park during his hospitalization. The rock formation was instantly recognized by him as he had spent time in the strange, arid environment.
In the months following her grandfather’s passing, the photographer continued to follow his footsteps. She went back to his University of Texas lab and walked around the fossils and old bones. She was able to see the most important find in his career, a skull of a primate with nasal bones that were as thin as paper. She has since gone on her own digs, continuing where he left and making discoveries along the way.
Time stretches for miles in the distance, set against the background of millions of year old bones. Past and present meet. Wilson’s grandfather’s ashes were scattered across the landscape that they both loved.