Virginia Beahan’s haunting photographs of the Salton Sea and its surroundings reveal the region’s layered history and precarious present. In Elegy for an Ancient Sea at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, Beahan presents images from her explorations of the California desert, as she brings a nuanced eye to the landscape’s fraught past. Through her visually sumptuous photographs, the Salton Sea becomes a kind of character, struggling to sustain life as its physical reality deteriorates.