This 31-by-66-inch horizontal panorama documents the Southern Arizona Museum (SAM) in Tucson—one of the institutions preserving military aircraft in a region whose desert climate makes it ideal for long-term aircraft storage. The five-and-a-half-foot width captures the museum’s display of decommissioned military aircraft.

Created in 1990, the work documents one of several Tucson-area facilities where Hayashi photographed military aviation heritage. The desert Southwest became America’s primary location for aircraft storage and museum display, the arid climate preventing corrosion that destroys aircraft elsewhere. Museums, boneyards, and storage facilities cluster near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

The horizontal format suits documentation of aircraft displays, the machines’ wingspans demanding wide compositional frames. Military aircraft embody enormous investment in engineering, manufacturing, and human training—resources converted into weapons that the Cold War produced in vast quantities and that peace rendered obsolete.

The photo collage technique fragments these machines while preserving their cumulative presence. Multiple exposures capture varying angles on aircraft whose designs evolved through decades of technological competition. The assembled composition documents military hardware that once represented national purpose, now preserved as historical artifact.

Aviation museums occupy an ambiguous position: celebrating engineering achievement while displaying weapons designed for destruction. This panorama captures that tension, documenting aircraft that veterans view with nostalgia while critics see as monuments to military-industrial excess.