Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico 2003
This was a magical moment; we had just come out of the dark and labyrinthian interior of the building, only to turn around and be presented with this fabulous cloud structure which had not been there when we went in. Sometimes, it all just works.
This image was made seventeen years ago; there were some other photographers nearby (see photo two shots to the left), but they were acting strangely. After every shot they looked at the backs of their cameras, changed something or other, and then made another shot. Confident behind my old Hasselblad, I was pretty sure they didn't know what they were doing.
Pueblo Bonito (Spanish for beautiful town) is the largest and best-known great house in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, northern New Mexico. It was built by the Ancestral Puebloans who occupied the structure between AD 828 and 1126.
According to the National Park Service, "Pueblo Bonito is the most thoroughly investigated and celebrated cultural site in Chaco Canyon. Planned and constructed in stages between AD 850 to AD 1150 by ancestral Puebloan peoples, this was the center of the Chacoan world." Anthropologist Brian Fagan has said that "Pueblo Bonito is an archeological icon, as famous as England's Stonehenge, Mexico's Teotihuacan, or Peru's Machu Picchu."
In January 1941, a section of the canyon wall known as Threatening Rock, or tse biyaa anii'ahi (leaning rock gap) in Navajo, collapsed as a result of a rock fall, destroying some of the structure's rear wall and a number of rooms. The builders of Pueblo Bonito appear to have been well aware of this threat, but chose to build beneath the fractured stone anyway. The wall stood 97 feet (30 m) high and weighed approximately 30,000 tons; the Puebloans compensated by building structural reinforcements for the slab.
Wikipedia
Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico 2003
This was a magical moment; we had just come out of the dark and labyrinthian interior of the building, only to turn around and be presented with this fabulous cloud structure which had not been there when we went in. Sometimes, it all just works.
This image was made seventeen years ago; there were some other photographers nearby (see photo two shots to the left), but they were acting strangely. After every shot they looked at the backs of their cameras, changed something or other, and then made another shot. Confident behind my old Hasselblad, I was pretty sure they didn't know what they were doing.
Pueblo Bonito (Spanish for beautiful town) is the largest and best-known great house in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, northern New Mexico. It was built by the Ancestral Puebloans who occupied the structure between AD 828 and 1126.
According to the National Park Service, "Pueblo Bonito is the most thoroughly investigated and celebrated cultural site in Chaco Canyon. Planned and constructed in stages between AD 850 to AD 1150 by ancestral Puebloan peoples, this was the center of the Chacoan world." Anthropologist Brian Fagan has said that "Pueblo Bonito is an archeological icon, as famous as England's Stonehenge, Mexico's Teotihuacan, or Peru's Machu Picchu."
In January 1941, a section of the canyon wall known as Threatening Rock, or tse biyaa anii'ahi (leaning rock gap) in Navajo, collapsed as a result of a rock fall, destroying some of the structure's rear wall and a number of rooms. The builders of Pueblo Bonito appear to have been well aware of this threat, but chose to build beneath the fractured stone anyway. The wall stood 97 feet (30 m) high and weighed approximately 30,000 tons; the Puebloans compensated by building structural reinforcements for the slab.
Wikipedia