"Bisti" Stuart Gelzer

"The Bisti" Stuart Gelzer. Photograph. 21" x 16". Framed.

Bisti –– rhymes with “twist-tie” –– in northwestern New Mexico (on NM Route 371, 40 miles south of Farmington), is a Bureau of Land Management wilderness area of hoodoos. A hoodoo is basically a hard rock held up on a pedestal of soft rock that it has protected from erosion. The hoodoos emerge from inside haystack-shaped mounds of very soft mudstone, which is mostly volcanic ash; as the haystack dwindles away the hoodoos remain. The mudstone erodes so easily that I think if you dropped a nickel a tiny new hoodoo would start to form under it.

The Bisti has thousands and thousands of hoodoos, large and small, at every stage from about to collapse to just now forming. There are no roads, no trails, no campgrounds, and no water in the wilderness area: you can camp rough or you can walk in. I’ve done both on my repeated visits to the Bisti to take these photographs.

40 years on 4 continents - I grew up in West Africa and India and wanted to be an archaeologist. Instead I’ve been a screenwriter, a film editor (Fallout, 1995), a drama teacher, and a singer specializing in folk music from the Republic of Georgia. These days when I’m not taking pictures I teach film at Highlands University in Las Vegas, NM, and write novels and travel memoir.

For images taken before the mid-2000s I shot film, using a Canon FTb. For images taken since the mid-2000s I shoot digital, using successive generations of Canon EOS.

All prints are signed; all matting materials are acid-free.  

Stuart Gelzer is represented at 2 Ten Galeria in Las Vegas NM.

http://www.stuartgelzerphotography.com/

All rights belonging to the holder of the copyright, including the reproduction rights, shall remain with the Artist.

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