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A petroglyph of a human figure etched into a wall in Utah. -
Pitctographs are usually found in landscapes with iron-rich nodules filled with a naturally occurring pigment used to create the paintings. -
A nighttime view of a petroglyoph in Utah. -
The “Wolfman Panel” in Utah, scarred by numerous bullet holes. -
Colorful pictographs festoon a sandstone wall in Utah. -
Many people visit a site, photograph it, and leave. Bailey says he tries to contemplate an image first, before his gear is even turned on. Long exposures allow him to separate himself from the camera equipment and capture images while experiencing a place.
Jonathan Bailey’s haunting photographs of Western pictographs join essays by Lawrence Baca, Greg Child, Lorran Meares and others to tell the larger story of a disappearing cultural heritage and the need for its conservation. Rock Art: A Vision of a Vanishing Cultural Landscape brings an ancient people to life through their stone-etched images, many of which are threatened by development and vandalism. “What will the future be for these images?” Bailey asks. The passion behind his photographs is apparent — and hard-won. Bailey often climbed, unassisted, to towering narrow ledges to view the sites the way the original artists did, centuries ago. The mysterious pictures they left still seem to whisper a hidden meaning. “If we don’t preserve that,” he writes, “we don’t deserve the land we walk on.”
Rock Art: A Vision of a Vanishing Cultural Landscape
By Jonathan Bailey
187 pages, softcover: $28.95.
Johnson Books, 2016.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Rock art and the struggle for preservation.
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