Lately, the weather has been a bit bipolar—last week it reached a whopping 103 degrees Fahrenheit, and today it is 75 degrees with scattered thunderstorms. Working in Midtown Manhattan, I was able to pick up a personal fan and an umbrella on both days to combat the elements. Without them, I'm just not well equipped to deal with such a wild climate!

Jump by Thomas Prior

Some artists, like mosses, enzymes, and lichens, are extremophiles—an organism that lives and thrives in an extreme environment. The most famous of these artists is probably Georgia O’Keefe, who after her first summer in New Mexico, fell in love with the barren landscape and expansive skies of the desert. She relished the desolate and decaying bone graveyards. She loved the burning, hot tones of reds and oranges. O’ Keefe wrote:

I have picked flowers where I have found them—have picked up sea shells and pieces of rock and wood that I liked... When I found the beautiful white bones on the desert I picked them up and took them home too... I have used these things to say to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.

20x200 has our very own extremophile, Thomas Prior, who is working on several documentary projects that look at beautiful and dangerous recreation spots around the world. He's photographed in the Bonneville Salt Flats, whose highest recorded temperature was 112 degrees Fahrenheit in 1939 and whose lowest recorded temperature was -18 degrees Fahrenheit in 1990. His photographs at Blackrock Tower in Ireland are slippery, treacherous, and filled with nervous anticipation. Prior says it best:

It's a mixture of the super dedicated people and beautiful open landscapes. I remembered the changing light and engine noise of Bonneville, Utah. Starting at about 4 p.m. in summer, the light changes by the minute all the way till dark after 10 p.m. Blackrock diving tower is such a cool structure, out there on that pier all by itself, and it’s so un-Americanly dangerous. The locations are simple yet not at all boring. They’re visually incredible but made more amazing by humans.

Steps by Thomas Prior

But, maybe the most extreme is Steve Eiden’s account of Leonard Knight who for the past 24 years has been living alone in the desert of Niland, California, a few miles from the shores of the Salton Sea, working ceaselessly on a giant monument to God known as Salvation Mountain. During the five coldest months of the year, he sleeps in the back of an old broken down flatbed truck. The other seven months of the year, he sleeps in this bed.

Leonard's Bed, Niland, California by Steve Eiden