American Graffiti: Petroglyphs and Pictographs of the Southwest
From the temple walls of ancient Egypt to the transgressive street art of Banksy, graffiti has been an integral part of the expressive nature of humanity. Defined as an art genre that consists of writing or drawing on a surface within public view, and often without permission, graffiti also has a rich history within the American Southwest, especially in El Norte.
I conceived of the idea for this project while photographing Newspaper Rock at Painted Desert National Park. I knew there were many locations in the Southwest where petroglyphs [incised] and pictographs [painted] could be found inscribed on rock walls – graffiti – and thought this would be a good subject for a photo essay. I visited and photographed rock art at Painted Desert National Park in Arizona, Canyon de Chelly on the Navajo Nation, and El Morro National Monument, Mesa Prieta, and Pilar in New Mexico. Each of these provided a different view of American Graffiti – from the pecked petroglyphs of Pilar and Mesa Prieta to the painted pictographs of Canyon de Chelly, from the Ancestral Puebloan style of Painted Desert to the archaic style of Pilar, from the Rio Grande style of Mesa Prieta to the contemporary incised names and initials of El Morro. They range in age from the Basketmaker Period [1500 BC to 750 AD] through Ancestral Puebloan [100-1600 AD] to the modern era [1600 AD-present]. This temporal continuum is particularly visible at El Morro.
Historic petroglyphs and pictographs served many purposes. They were used to mark the landscape [trails, the presence of water], to record historic events [memorable hunts, the appearance of Europeans], to record astronomical events [eclipses], to tell of epic hunts, to document religious ceremonies, or just to tell stories. More recent carvings in stone, as seen at El Morro National Monument, record the presence of travelers passing through – conquistadors, Civil War soldiers, or just random individuals who stopped for water at the spring that made this location such a popular place.
This series of photographs thus serves to illustrate a wide spectrum of the rock art of the Southwest – “American Graffiti.”
I conceived of the idea for this project while photographing Newspaper Rock at Painted Desert National Park. I knew there were many locations in the Southwest where petroglyphs [incised] and pictographs [painted] could be found inscribed on rock walls – graffiti – and thought this would be a good subject for a photo essay. I visited and photographed rock art at Painted Desert National Park in Arizona, Canyon de Chelly on the Navajo Nation, and El Morro National Monument, Mesa Prieta, and Pilar in New Mexico. Each of these provided a different view of American Graffiti – from the pecked petroglyphs of Pilar and Mesa Prieta to the painted pictographs of Canyon de Chelly, from the Ancestral Puebloan style of Painted Desert to the archaic style of Pilar, from the Rio Grande style of Mesa Prieta to the contemporary incised names and initials of El Morro. They range in age from the Basketmaker Period [1500 BC to 750 AD] through Ancestral Puebloan [100-1600 AD] to the modern era [1600 AD-present]. This temporal continuum is particularly visible at El Morro.
Historic petroglyphs and pictographs served many purposes. They were used to mark the landscape [trails, the presence of water], to record historic events [memorable hunts, the appearance of Europeans], to record astronomical events [eclipses], to tell of epic hunts, to document religious ceremonies, or just to tell stories. More recent carvings in stone, as seen at El Morro National Monument, record the presence of travelers passing through – conquistadors, Civil War soldiers, or just random individuals who stopped for water at the spring that made this location such a popular place.
This series of photographs thus serves to illustrate a wide spectrum of the rock art of the Southwest – “American Graffiti.”