Bombay Beach: The Beauty of Decay

In 2021, in an attempt to hone my skills, I took a travel photography class from noted photographer and Stanford professor, Joel Simon. For the final exam, we were assigned a photo essay with the objective of capturing the essence of a place with images. For my project, I chose a forgotten town called Bombay Beach that’s about an hour east of Palm Springs.

Bombay Beach is an unincorporated city in Imperial County, situated along the Salton Sea's north shore. It was founded in the 1950s as a resort community catering to water sports enthusiasts. However, adjacent farms polluted the sea with pesticides over the next several decades. The water also started to evaporate and the salt levels rose, causing the sea to become toxic. By the 1970s, the once vibrant city had become an abandoned post-apocalyptic wasteland

Today, the population of Bombay Beach has contracted to around 200 people. The streets are dotted with abandoned buildings and the beach stands desolate. Crumbling fish carcasses are scattered along the shore and the smell of stagnant water blows in from the water. This is a place that stands on the precipice of becoming a ghost town.

Nevertheless, hope persists. In 2015, artists discovered this place and started the Bombay Beach Biennale — an audacious celebration of art, music, and philosophy that takes place on the literal edge of Western civilization. Gradually, the dilapidated structures are being transformed into modern art exhibits, breathing new life into this solemn landscape

At 2 PM, in the day's scorching heat, I arrived in Bombay Beach. I stuffed my camera gear into a backpack and wandered out onto the beach. The silence was broken by a cracking sound made by my feet each time I stepped along the shoreline. As I looked down, it occurred to me that I wasn’t standing on sand at all. It was actually tiny bone fragments from a million dead fish that had died over the last 50 years.

Further along the beach, amid the fish and bird skeletons, I discovered a battered wooden door that opened to nowhere. I turned the handle and walked through it, half expecting to be transported to another dimension.

In the water, about 20 yards offshore, a rope swing hung above the surface and rocked gently back and forth with the breeze. Both were remnant art installations from the Bienalle that made this place feel like a lucid dream. I set up my camera and pointed it at myself with the shutter set to auto-timer. I sat down in a chair from the 1970s that was upholstered with dirty velour fabric. What a strange and wonderful life I live, I thought to myself.

On the other side of the earthen berm that safeguards the city from the Salton Sea, the

streets were empty. Perspiration made my pants stick to my legs as I ventured through vacant structures in search of art in situ. Occasionally, I would see an expressionless face in a window or someone staring at me blankly from the steps of their mobile home. I began to feel as though I was trespassing. Maybe I am, I thought, as I wandered into an abandoned structure.

“Can I go in there,” I asked a bare-chested man with long hair as I pointed to an abandoned building that was covered with graffiti.

“I don’t care,” he answered without looking up and continued to wrench on the engine of his ancient firebird in the afternoon heat

Inside the building, the kitchen was painted lime green. The words “If cleanliness is next to

Godliness, I’m going to hell,” was scrawled across the wall. A hundred scrub brushes hung from the ceiling. Further down the hallway, I found the bathroom which was painted blue. There were several dozen toilet plungers affixed to the walls and ceiling. It’s a strange and surreal experience to walk through the exhibits alone. In fact, as I walked through the structures, I couldn’t help but feel as though I was a character in a horror film. I half expected a masked psychopath to jump out of the shadows at any moment.

Two streets over on a vacant lot, I stumbled across a dozen ancient vehicles, in various states of disrepair. They were arranged in parallel lines and pointed eternally to the west towards a blank white movie screen. The sign at the entrance proclaimed Bombay Beach Drive-in. I imagined that this was the kind of art that Salvador Dali would have created if he was raised in the desert and addicted to methamphetamine.

When the day got late, I grabbed a can of beer from the Bombay Beach convenience store and returned to the beach for sunset. This time I wasn’t alone. Another photographer took pictures of anemic birds and two young women posed barefoot on the shore and took selfies without realizing they were standing on the bones of dead fish. I set up my tripod, slipped a neutral density filter over my camera lens, and captured long exposure photographs of the setting sun. None of us spoke.

As the sun faded away below the horizon, it was hard to tell where the sky ended and the sea began. Like the brush strokes of an artist, they had become complimentary shades of blue and blended together like a dream. Then it occurred to me, that in this place, it’s hard to tell where reality ends and dreams begin. This place is as close to being on drugs as you can get without actually being on drugs.

I clicked the shutter on my camera and took a swig of warm beer as the polluted waters of the Salton Sea rhythmically caressed the shore and lulled me into a delirious state of bliss. I had become hypnotized by this place.

I was halfway back home, near the dinosaurs of Cabazon, when a sense of normalcy gradually reemerged within me.