Last Command — Arizona, 2015

"Last Command" — Arizona, 2015 Fine Art Print — Roadside Series by Thomas Hoeffgen

Someone sat in that chair and flew this thing.

The cockpit is intact — that's what stops you. Panels of instruments still bolted to the walls, hundreds of switches and dials running floor to ceiling on both sides, insulation hanging loose from the ceiling like shed skin, Arizona light burning white through the windshield ahead. A leather command chair sits empty in the center of the frame, slightly turned, as if the pilot just stood up and stepped out for a moment.

He didn't come back.

This is a military aircraft — the scale of the instrument panels, the green metal, the sheer density of the controls tells you that. Someone designed every switch in this room. Someone else learned what each one did. Missions were planned here, orders given, altitudes held at 30,000 feet over places that mattered. Now debris on the floor. Now weeds somewhere beneath the fuselage. Now a photographer standing in the doorway in the Arizona heat, trying to hold completely still.

The light coming through the cockpit windows does something to this image that no studio could manufacture. It is the light of a place that has been left alone for a very long time.

From the Roadside series — a road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles along Route 66, shot on assignment for Timberland that evolved into a self-published book and PDN Photo Annual Award winner (2016).

Available as a museum-quality fine art print on premium archival paper, in multiple sizes. Signed by the artist.