In northwestern New Mexico, located off the well-traveled roads, is a little-known area of unique geological formations called “hoodoos”: Here the erosion of layered rock of varying hardness formed spires and columns capped with slabs of lighter stone. The bright colors of the mineralized structures, interleaved with thin black bands of coal, add to the beauty of this wonderland. Intrinsic to the mystery and scientific importance of the place are the fossil remains of ancient animals of the Cretaceous Period.
Because of its unusual character, a small part of this eroded badlands – named “Bisti” by the Indians – has been set aside in perpetuity; it will be preserved against greedy exploitation by short-sighted interests that recognize no value beyond immediate gain. For what makes the Bisti vulnerable to attack are those black veins of coal that add so greatly to its beauty and speak so eloquently of its history. The strip miners of coal would not hesitate to destroy this wondrous geological phenomenon and paleontological treasure for a product of ephemeral benefit.
When David Scheinbaum first visited the Bisti badlands, he immediately recognized their beauty and determined to record the area photographically. There, surrounded by these exotic remnants out of the distant past, obsessed by them, he found his inspiration. In the last analysis, nature is the source of all the artist's creative efforts. Even abstract expressionism, which originates in the mind, has its source in nature, if we accept the premise that man is part of nature. The connection, of course, is much closer in the schools of objective realism.
In his attempt to understand nature, the artist is constantly portraying it in painting or slicing out bits in photographs. He believes that an understanding of nature is to be found in its complexity and beauty, not in its utility. Unfortunately, beauty per se has acquired soft, sentimental overtones that are not at all what the artist finds so compelling in nature. What he sees is rather the extraordinary variety in the world around him. This is what inspires him. In this respect the artist and the scientist, particularly the ecologist, have much in common. One expresses his fascination emotionally, in his pictures, while the other expresses the same preoccupation intellectually. The difference is that good science cannot exist with emotion, and art cannot exist without it. Attempts to produce purely intellectual art succeed only to a limited degree, because they have sterilized the emotional content.
The artist is particularly concerned with conservation because of his commitment to nature. He speaks for nature through his art. Because nature is the subject in which he is totally involved, he must believe in conserving nature or he is self-destructive. If the natural world were destroyed, his art would, in proportion to the place it occupies, perish. Piecemeal destruction of wildness amounts to piecemeal destruction of inspiration.
Eliot Porter, Introduction to David Scheinbaum’s Bisti portfolio, 1985
Preface to Bisti by David Scheinbaum
When I first arrived in New Mexico I was awed by the incredible amount of space. I am not the first person to have felt this way, having been preceded by generations of explorers searching for the Great West - the land of gold, sunshine, cowboys and Indians, adventure, and rugged individualism. But to me, a born and bred city dweller who had to stand on rooftops for a view of the horizon, this new sense of space differed from anything that I had ever known. I had to learn to come to terms with the space so that its beauty and power would cease to be overwhelming. In translating my feelings to film, I began to enjoy both physically and emotionally the vastness of the Southwest.
The Bisti fascinated me from the first moment that I saw it. Here was an ancient land, once sea-bottom and forest, once populated by prehistoric animal life, later by the now disappeared Anasazi culture, and presently by the Navajo people. This land is dry and seemingly barren, without any visible source of water, with extremely sparse vegetation, cracked earth, unending vistas, and high mineral content that paints it with different striations of tones. The landscape is haunting in its beauty and timelessness, reminding you of the small amount of time that man has inhabited this earth, and the fragility of his relation to it.
I was intrigued by the enormous size of the Bisti, the rhythm of line and shape, texture and form, the way light dances around in the strange formations created by thousands of years of wind, water, and erosion. The Bisti has a beauty that has to be discovered. To many people, at first glance, the beauty of this harsh and barren environment is not obvious. It requires and demands a deeper seeing. The Bisti is a place of contradictions. The natural sense of balance and form is distorted and the distortions repeated in similar patterns of all sizes throughout the area. One’s senses become unreliable. Size and scale are totally distorted. At times one feels like Gulliver in the land of giants, and at other times like Alice in the rabbit’s hole. Large boulders are supported by thin pinhead-shaped rocks so slender that one is sure they could crumble at the slightest touch, and yet they have stood, exposed to the elements for though sands of years, balancing with huge amounts of weight. The land is mysterious: monsters and strange creatures are carved in stone; formations no bigger than my knee hold large play leave fossils and the remains of prehistoric animals, petrified tree trunks an dinosaur bones.
Photographing in the Bisti is different than photographing a majestic cloud formation or thundering waterfall, subjects that have an intrinsic beauty that most people recognize immediately. The Visit requires a more interpretive way of seeing. Only after spending time there does the land begin to reveal itself. My photographs are, by necessity, observations and interpretations rather than “factual records.” To me, these are not documentary images of the Bisti but images made in the Bisti, in a more personal sense. My unscientific approach to an area that is important to the scientific community prompted me to ask Garrick Bailey, Spencer Lucas, and Andrew Davis to write the text for this book. These three men are not just experts in their respective fields, but they, like I, have been personally involved with the area. Garrick Bailey, professor of anthropology at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, spent five years researching the culture and history of the northern Chaco Plateau, which includes the Bisti. Spencer Lucas, curator and professor of geology at the University of New Mexico, has spent many years digging and teaching in the San Juan Basin, which also includes the Bisti. Andrew David, conservationist and activist, edits the Chaco Bisti News, a journal dedicated to the survival of the Chaco Plateau. These authors unravel many of the mysteries that my photographs point out but do not explain. The Bisti, its formation, its past and current populations, the present Threats to it from contemporary industry are all explained in the their essays.
Rather than document the demise of the Bisti by the strip mining, mineral exploration, and highway and power plant construction, I chose to record its beauty with my photographs. Perhaps in time, more of us will relate to the wilderness in a more sensitive way. I hope this volume will contribute to that end.