2011
These six images complete my attempt to visually convey the 200 million year passage of time when Ghost Ranch’s oldest exposed rock became part of a collection of varicolored siltstone, mudstone and sandstone deposited by rivers.
2011
One hour north of Santa Fe is Georgia O’Keefe Country: vast vistas, table-topped mesas, tall cliffs, and winding rivers bordered by ancient cottonwoods.
Because this block of the earth’s crust remained relatively stable for 600 million years, the rocks around Ghost Ranch are generally flat-lying and less deformed by broad-scale folding. Situated within the broad shallow Chama Basin along the eastern margin of the Colorado Plateau’s transition to the Rio Grande Rift further east — and occupying parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado — the oldest rocks exposed in the Ghost Ranch area are a thick collection of brick-red to red siltstone, mudstone, and white to tan sandstone, deposited by rivers more than 200 million years ago, when this area was located about 10 degrees north of the equator.
In 1929, Georgia O’Keefe first began painting part of each year in northern New Mexico. In 1934 she first visited Ghost Ranch; it’s varicolored cliffs inspired some of her most famous landscapes. In 1949, she made her permanent home on a cliff above Abiquiu. O’Keefe wrote in 1977: “Such a beautiful, untouched, lonely feeling place, such a fine part of what I call the “Faraway’. It is a place I have painted before… even now I must do it again”.
Nor have I been able to resist repeatedly overlaying this landscape with my own sense of the passage of time…
2015
Back home from China in Santa Fe; several weeks later I drove east across the high plains of Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle before heading south to Ft. Worth to see friends. En route, I stopped to have a look at Palo Duro Canyon, situated just south of Amarillo, that claims to be the second largest canyon in the U.S. Typical spring weather — wind and furious thunderstorms across Texas’ high plains — did not disappoint.
Early Spanish Explorers discovered the area and named the canyon “Palo Duro,” Spanish for “hardwood” due to the abundant mesquite and juniper trees. Palo Duro Canyon’s elevation at its rim is 3,500 feet; it is 120 miles long, 20 miles wide, and 800 feet deep, compared to the Grand Canyon — the largest in the U.S. — which is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft deep.
Palo Duro Canyon State Park comprises 30,000 acres at the north end of the canyon. Water erosion from the Red River deepens the canyon as it moves sediment downstream, while wind and water erosion gradually widen the canyon.
Humans have resided in the canyon for approximately 12,000 years. Nomadic tribes hunted mammoth, giant bison, and other large game. Later, Apache Indians lived in the canyon, but were soon replaced by Comanche and Kiowa tribes, who resided in the area until 1874 when Colonel Ranald Mackenzie was sent into the area to transport them to a newly appointed reservation in Oklahoma.
In 1876, Charles Goodnight entered the canyon and opened the JA Ranch, which at its peak, supported more than 100,000 head of cattle.
2014
Abiquiu Lake is a reservoir located in Rio Arriba County 60 miles north of Santa Fe.
The Rio Chama was damned in 1963 to create the 5,200 acre Abiquiu Lake, which is more than 12 miles long at an elevation of 6,100 feet.
From the bluffs along the southern side of the lake, the views north of the red cliffs that frame Ghost Ranch are just beautiful. Behind (south of) the lake is the very distinctive 9,862′ mountain, Cerro Pedernal.
2013
Mount Garfield at 6,780′ elevation is the high point of the Book Cliffs range — a series of desert mountains and cliffs stretching 200 miles from western Colorado into eastern Utah, north of Grand Junction. Appearing primarily along the southern and western edge of the Tavaputs Plateau, these cliffs are largely composed of sedimentary materials that cap many of the south-facing buttes, appearing similar to a shelf of books.
Within the Colorado Plateau geologic province, these cliffs of Cretaceous sandstone begin where the Colorado River descends south through De Beque Canyon into the Grand Valley before running west to Price Canyon near Helper, UT.
2012
Just south of Santa Fe at the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountains, the Galisteo Basin begins a 2,500′ elevation descent south over 40 miles to the Sandias adjacent to Albuquerque; And to the west it stretches beyond the Rio Grande Rift to the southern end of the foothills of the Jemez Mountains.
Surrounded by these three mountain ranges, the Galisteo Basin’s classic northern New Mexico high desert landscape offers dramatic views in all directions. Having introduced three Galisteo Basin image series captured in 2011, this posting comprises a series of the Galisteo Basin captured from a morning helicopter flight in 2012.
To view more images of the Galisteo Basin, see Galisteo Basin I, Galisteo Basin II and Galisteo Basin III.
2012
Warm early March light on this lovely array of high desert colors, just north of Abiquiu Lake, leading west from Ghost Ranch along the dirt road to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert…
‘Georgia O’Keefe country’ is an hour north of Santa Fe, and lies within the broad shallow Chama Basin along the eastern margin of the Colorado Plateau as it transitions toward the Rio Grande Rift further east. Because the Colorado Plateau has been a relatively stable block in the Earth’s crust for at least 600 million years, the rocks around Ghost Ranch are generally flat-lying and less deformed by broad-scale folding.
The oldest exposed rocks in the ghost ranch area belong to a thick layer of brick-red to red siltstone and mudstone, and mudstone and white to tan sandstone. Deposited more than 200+ million years ago when the Ghost Ranch area was located just 10 degrees north of the equator these varicolored cliffs provide its signature palette, when raised by low-angled light.
Blended with motion, it is my intent that this palette suggest its millions of years’ passage of time.
To view more images of Ghost Ranch, see Ghost Ranch and Ghost Ranch II.
1999
Western Space + Time
Having awakened my appetite for large-scale landscape, I explored other western vistas in Wyoming, Utah, California and northern Arizona, in addition to return visits to the high country of Montana. Experimenting with the panoramic format, I found it easier to capture the breadth of the land while more closely matching its flow.
During the creation of this series, I first realized that my obsession with condensing time via motion within a single frame was intimately linked to a lifetime of restlessness.
1997
Needing an escape from urban living, I spent weeks in the solitude of Montana’s incredible high-country where I first experienced the grandeur of western landscape. It’s grand distances, unavailable in the Washington, DC parks, opened up a host of new possibilities in light, color and resolution that took me to a place I hadn’t experienced since the transatlantic ocean sailing days of my early twenties.
