Archive All Issues June 2009

ROCK ART

Normally when we talk about rock art, we're talking about pictographs or petroglyphs. This is different. This is photography. Actually, it's more than that. According to a panel of mesmerized magazine staffers, the work of Wes Timmerman crosses into the realm of fine art. "Paintings, sculptures, masterpieces." Those are the words they used to describe this month's portfolio.

Featured in the June 2009 Issue of Arizona Highways

BY: Wes Timmerman (A Portfolio)

Q: Over the years, Arizona Highways has published hundreds — maybe thousands — of photos of the Grand Canyon. Frankly, we thought we’d seen it all, but your work is different. What makes it unique?

— Jeff Kida, photo editor

A: In September 2000, after an incredible river trip through the Grand Canyon, I started thinking about creating a body of large-format photographic work within the Canyon — it’s a landscape of immense possibility, in both science and art. One day, while at Cape Royal, on the perch above Angels Window, I decided it was time to commit. In the course of backpacking hundreds of miles over the past eight years, I’d barely scratched the surface of the world within a world. The creative possibilities are as staggering as the scale of the Canyon itself. No two trips have been the same for me, and each has revealed a different aspect of the landscape. My work has focused more on the nature of the rock than the horizon. The “feeling” that there’s something here to express photographically comes from my collective subconscious; something that is ever-changing; something that’s being updated and refreshed with each exposure.

— Wes Timmerman

Shinumo Quartzite offers a geometric study in texture and color.

Wedged into the diorite surface and frozen in time, a pluton coated in red silt reflects the sunset light, mimicking a nearby silt-filled rock depression.

Many side canyons combine unique blends of textures, colors and shapes, creating Eden-like cienegas off the main river channel.

Over millions of years, wind and water carved Tapeats Sandstone, creating deep, sinuous passages throughout the Grand Canyon.

Deep within the Canyon’s interior, morning light bathes an ephemeral stream with a warm glow, highlighting the contrasting colors of earth and sky.

The flat, shiny surface of Brahma Schist in the lower reaches of the Canyon catches the brilliant blue reflection of the sky above, adding contrast to the dark rock wall.

As water carved deeper, smoothly beveled rocks took shape in the Canyon’s Inner Gorge.

Lichen grows on the surface of a Canyon wall coated with desert varnish, creating abstract ornamentation of the natural world.