MICHAEL C. ROBERTS is a mostly retired pediatric psychologist who, during the pandemic, began painting rocks and leaving them around his neighborhood as tokens of encouragement. Lacking, in his own words, “any real artistic skill with a paintbrush,” he soon returned to photography, where his eye proved more fluent than his hand.

His images have appeared in numerous literary journals and on several covers. He is the author of Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga.

Roberts’s work lingers on what often goes unnoticed: the overlooked, the peripheral, the background hush of the everyday. Recently, he has turned toward minimalism as both method and mood, stripping scenes down to elemental forms. Shot largely in the stark beauty of the Sonoran Desert, his photographs evoke a quiet austerity. To some they may appear bleak, but within their pared-down silence lies a complex simplicity and an ethereal grace—reminders of what endures beneath the surface.