The Hottest Part of the Desert features photographs by Marshall Weber and Tim Page that journey through colonial/post-colonial wars and illuminate global indigenous liberation struggles. Traveling around the world Weber made rubbings from monuments/memorials, painted and inked the book, and applied stencil calligraphy of a short poem.

This is book two in the “Remembrance and Resonance” series between Weber and Tim Page who is best known for his iconic photographs from the Vietnam War. The photographs show his courage, integrity, and recklessness. Page has received a Robert Capa Award and a few non-American to receive the Purple Heart Medal from the U.S.A.

An inkjet photograph by Dana Smith with a poem by Daisy Zamora forms the covers, and another inkjet print of Smith’s, with a text by Weber, forms the centerfold piece. Isabelle Weber contributed the large inkjet prints by John Martin of her Max character are the intro and outro pages. The Malcolm X/Ho Chi Minh is a vintage 1978-80 screen-print and is attributed to both Jerry Biggs and John Jernegan at the People’s Press in Berkeley. There are also rubbings from the Wounded Knee Massacre on the Oglala and Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation located in Montana, the Little Big Horn battleground in Crow Agency, Montana, the Peace Memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Rammytush Memorial in San Francisco, California, and the ANZAC Memorial and various Aboriginal markers in Melbourne, Australia.

“You who are about to read, I salute you…”

Empire of Tears
built on salt bricks distilled from the centuries
of blood and salt drained from mother and children
and sons and daughters and creatures large and small

Who desired oceans of suffering?
Who would deny love?
Thrives on cruelty?

We brought the towers down upon ourselves
And turned the world to dust.

—Marshall Weber, 2017