Series · 9 works

Under Weather, Monument Valley

The buttes of Monument Valley under storm skies, in black and white.

Series note

Most photographs of Monument Valley fill the frame with the buttes. In these, the rock sits low in the picture and the sky takes up the rest. Weather was building over the plateau: clouds stacking up, light breaking through and closing again, and in one frame a column of rain falling on open ground.

I printed them in black and white. The red and orange of the desert are what everyone knows this place for, and without them the pictures are about scale and tone. The buttes become a way to measure how big the sky is.

The series has single monoliths, pairs of formations, and that one column of rain, all photographed while the sky was changing by the minute.

Contact sheet

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Under Weather9 frames

  1. Black and white photograph of a solitary sandstone butte in Monument Valley beneath a dramatic, textured sky filled with layered clouds.
    Monolith and Sky, Monument Valley
  2. A dramatic black and white photograph of a towering rock formation rising from arid plains beneath a vast, textured sky filled with heavy, swirling clouds.
    Monolith Under Gathering Sky
  3. Black and white photograph of a massive desert butte beneath dramatic, textured storm clouds, with sparse scrub in the foreground.
    Monolith Under Weather
  4. A black and white photograph of a large sandstone butte in Monument Valley, with dramatic clouds overhead and sparse desert vegetation in the foreground.
    Monolith, Monument Valley
  5. A massive sandstone butte stands alone in a wide desert plain under dramatic, cloud-filled skies. The image is in black and white.
    Monolith, Monument Valley
  6. Black and white photograph of a large sandstone butte in a desert landscape, framed by textured foreground rocks and dramatic, cloud-filled sky.
    Monolith, Under Gathering Sky
  7. Three large rock formations rise from a flat desert plain beneath a dramatic, cloud-filled sky in black and white.
    Monumental Weather
  8. Black and white panorama of Monument Valley with three large buttes rising from arid desert, beneath dramatic, textured clouds.
    Monuments Under Weather
  9. Black and white photograph of a dramatic sky over a flat desert landscape, with a heavy rain shaft falling from dark clouds near a distant mesa.
    Rainfall, High Desert

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