The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

By the time I arrived in New Mexico this November, the numbers out of Washington were already worse than in April. Since the presidential inauguration, the National Park Service has now shed roughly a quarter of its permanent staff through buyouts, forced retirements, rescinded offers, and an ongoing hiring freeze. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” had just clawed back about $267 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding that was supposed to rebuild park staffing and capacity. The agency is now being run by its former comptroller in an acting role, with a hollowed-out leadership team and more than a hundred superintendent positions either vacant or filled on a temporary basis.

During a Q&A session with U.S. senators on May 21, 2025, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has made it clear what matters to him: “crown jewel” national parks that draw crowds are “winners”; low-visitation sites are “cost centers” and potential candidates to be pushed back to the states. When the government shutdown began at the start of October, I canceled one set of travel plans and kept hoping the situation would be resolved before November, when I knew I would be going to New Mexico to attend Review Santa Fe. My main goal there wasn’t to revisit the national parks but to spend time in exactly the kinds of places this administration treats as expendable: the small national monuments scattered across the state.

Bandelier: Closed Canyons, Open Ridges

Although relatively popular thanks to its proximity to Santa Fe, Bandelier National Monument is one of the sites that, in Burgum’s language, risks being labeled a “cost center”: a place built around archaeology and deep time, not bucket-list crowds. The shutdown made that hierarchy visible. As illustrated by the picture above, Frijoles Canyon—the main visitor area with dwellings carved into the soft tuff—was closed. The Tsankawi unit, another cluster of ancestral homes and petroglyphs, was also off-limits. Gates were locked with a sign “No access beyond this point added”. Yet the peripheral trails with no obvious archaeological sites remained open, maybe because they had no gates. I ended up hiking the Cerro Grande Trail, which climbs to the monument’s high point. From the summit, you look out over burned and regrowing forests, and the Valles Caldera. It was beautiful, quiet, and empty at sunset. It also felt like a preview of the administration’s endgame: keep the scenic overlooks accessible while the fragile cultural core stays shuttered because there’s simply no staff to manage it.

Capulin: Walking the Road Instead of Driving It

At Capulin Volcano National Monument, the small visitor center was closed and the gate across Volcano Road was locked to vehicles. Under normal circumstances, you drive the narrow, spiraling road to the summit parking lot and do a short walk around the crater rim. A sign at the gate explicitly allowed hikers and cyclists to use the road during daylight hours. So I did what the sign (and the website) invited me to do: shouldered my pack and walked straight up the asphalt. From a photographer’s perspective, the closure had unexpected advantages. When the road is open, you can’t safely stop on the steep, twisting grade; the pullouts are minimal, and there’s little incentive to walk the pavement if everyone else is cruising by in a car. With no traffic, the road becomes a trail. I could stop wherever the view aligned. I met only two parties: one couple on foot, another on bikes. A volunteer patrol truck made a slow pass and disappeared. That was the entire human presence on an otherwise perfect fall day. Standing on the rim, looking into the crater and then out to five states on the horizon, it was hard to map this experience onto the language of “winners” and “losers.” Capulin is small, low-key, and easy to overlook in a budget spreadsheet. On the ground, it’s a concentrated lesson in geology and scale.

Fort Union and Salinas Pueblo Missions: Locked Gates, Open Sky

Fort Union National Monument and two of the three units of Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument were completely closed when I arrived, although the sign “Park is Closed. Trespassing, tampering, and vandalism are prohibited” did not exactly send the same message as the sign reading “national parks will remain as accessible as possible.” The Abo unit of Salinas remained open, probably because its access road is used by local residents. Here, the irony of current NPS drone policy came into focus. Since 2014, the National Park Service has had a blanket prohibition on launching, landing, or operating unmanned aircraft from within park boundaries. However, the NPS does not control the airspace above its units—that’s FAA jurisdiction—and the rule applies to operations on NPS-administered lands and waters, not to aircraft flown from outside those boundaries. In practice, that meant something strange during the shutdown: Stepping around a locked gate into a signed “closed” unit would almost certainly have been illegal. Standing outside the boundary and launching a small drone into FAA-controlled airspace (within range of sight) remained legal. So at Fort Union and Salinas, as at the Tsankawi unit of Bandelier, my only way to “enter” the sites was from above. From that vantage point, the picture changes. At Fort Union, the linear footprint of the old fort resolves into geometry: parade grounds, supply depots, rutted Santa Fe Trail traces still visible in the surrounding prairie.

Prehistoric Trackways and Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks: Public Lands Remain Open to the Public

Not all of the places I visited were run by the Park Service. Prehistoric Trackways National Monument, in the Robledo Mountains near Las Cruces, is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, not NPS. It’s 5,000-plus acres of largely undeveloped desert: no visitor center, no entrance station, just a rough parking area and a web of paths climbing into Permian-age strata where fossil trackways lie exposed in the rock. During the shutdown, nothing about that experience changed. There were no gates to lock, no fee booths to close, no rangers to furlough on site. In earlier posts, I’ve argued that BLM landscapes like this are the purest expression of the public-lands idea—that, absent a specific closure order, they simply stay open to whoever is willing to make the effort to walk in. Seeing Prehistoric Trackways function as usual while nearby NPS units were shuttered made that contrast very clear. Although some of the best trackways are now housed in museum collections in Las Cruces and Albuquerque, a number remain exposed at the Discovery Site. I zeroed in on one formation that looked more visually striking than the others and, having neglected to bring my tripod, relied on hand-held, rapid-fire automated focus bracketing to keep everything sharp. Later research, however, suggests that particular feature wasn’t a fossil at all.

The same was true, in a different way, at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, also BLM-managed in partnership with Cochiti Pueblo. Before the pandemic, I could just show up at the gate in the morning and enter the site like any other day-use area. In the intervening years, the site landed firmly on the map of mass tourism, and the crowds brought unwelcome disturbance to this tribal land. Tent Rocks now operates under some of the strictest rules of any parklands: paid advance reservations with both BLM and the tribal authorities, hard caps on daily visitation, mandatory check-in at the Pueblo’s visitor center, and even pilot vehicles leading cars to the trailhead. All visitors need to be out by 4 pm. At 2:15 pm, a ranger told me to head down the trail, tailing me closely for the entire hike out. Yet during the shutdown it was “open as usual”—which in this case means fully functioning under those tight constraints. Slot canyons and cone-shaped hoodoos were still accessible to anyone who navigated the reservation system, even as nearby NPS monuments sat behind locked gates. The difference wasn’t in how carefully the resource was managed—it was in which agency had the authority, and the will, to close the door.

Castner Range National Monument: Not Ready for Opening

Castner Range National Monument, on the edge of El Paso, is a different kind of closure. I knew the former Army range was off-limits while ordnance is cleaned up, but since I was in the area I drove to the perimeter anyway. The best outside view is from the El Paso Museum of Archaeology, where the foothills rise cleanly behind the building—though the range is strongly backlit in the evening. On the map, the Transmountain Highway that bisects the monument reads like a flat desert crossing; in reality it’s a steep, fast, four-lane commuter route between El Paso and Las Cruces, with heavy traffic and very few safe pullouts. With the land itself closed and the road functionally hostile to stopping, I ended up relying on the drone again to get a real sense of the monument’s rugged terrain.

White Sands: A Park That Looks Fine on the Surface

Promoted to national park status in 2019 while I was there, White Sands National Park draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year and functions as one of New Mexico’s marquee attractions. I had photographed the park in spring and in winter, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to catch a bit of fall color there—completing my collection of fall foliage in the national parks. Although the park is renowned for its dunes, peripheral sections such as the Dune Life Nature Trail host Rio Grande cottonwoods and shrubs that turn a bright yellow at the right time of year.

At the start of the shutdown, White Sands National Park was fully closed, unlike some other big parks that stayed partly open. By the time I arrived, on Nov 7, you wouldn’t have known the federal government had run out of money from what I saw on the ground. The entrance station was staffed, rangers were answering questions at the visitor center, and maintenance crews were out on the main road—so present, in fact, that a lane closure cost me fifteen minutes of fading light on the dunes. The only visible change was that nobody collected fees at the gate – not helpful for the park. On the ground, everything at White Sands was calibrated to look normal. Restrooms were usable, Dune Drive was open to the end, and visitors were still getting their sunset on the dunes. If all you cared about was the immediate experience, the park felt almost untouched by the shutdown.

From reading and from conversations with current and former NPS staff and park advocates, I’ve learned there’s a name for this: “facade management.” The idea is to keep the visitor-facing optics intact while the real damage accumulates out of sight in empty offices, unfilled positions, and long-term projects quietly dropped. The Organic Act gives the Park Service a double charge—to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources of the parks and to provide for their enjoyment—and rangers sometimes call it the “dueling mandate” because those goals are often in tension. At White Sands, people inside the system would say the enjoyment side is being protected with great care, while the capacity to do the preservation work quietly erodes in the background. If your metric is “Can I still get my sunset photo?”, White Sands looked healthy. If your metric is whether the park has the staff and funding to monitor invasive species, protect resources, and plan for a hotter, drier future, the picture is very different. I have spent much of my career making exactly the kind of pictures this model rewards: sunsets, access, the promise that the parks are doing fine. I am also paying attention to now in New Mexico and at home to everything those pictures don’t show.

The shutdown

Government shutdowns have collided with the Park Service before, and each one has been handled differently. In 1995, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and NPS leadership closed most parks outright, arguing that without staff they couldn’t meet the Organic Act’s requirement to conserve resources “unimpaired” for future generations. In 2013, Jonathan Jarvis made the same call as NPS director, took heavy political heat, and later defended the closures as the only legally defensible option. By contrast, during the 2018–19 shutdown, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt kept parks open with almost no staff, and the result was predictable: vandalized petroglyphs, Joshua trees cut down for firewood, off-road tracks scarring desert soils, overflowing trash, and locked or fouled toilets. At the time, in a write up about visiting the national parks during the shutdown, I reluctantly concluded that with so little staffing the best solution was to close the parks and, for most people, to wait until they were fully staffed again. This latest shutdown sits somewhere between those precedents. In their recent op-ed, Jonathan and Destry Jarvis restate that keeping parks open during a shutdown flatly violates the Organic Act. I think they slightly overstate the case. This time, at many of the large national parks, law-enforcement rangers and at least some maintenance crews have been kept on duty, which prevented a complete free-for-all like in 2018–19. However, it is true that large parts of the workforce that handle science, planning, interpretation, and day-to-day resource protection are missing. Smaller units, especially low-visitation monuments like the ones I visited in New Mexico, often don’t even get that minimal level of support: they are simply closed, or left in a kind of suspended animation, while the marquee parks are kept looking open and “normal.”

Every shutdown is disruptive, but this one landed on a system already weakened by staffing cuts and clawed-back funding. In that context, what I saw in New Mexico makes uncomfortable sense. A high-profile unit like White Sands can be kept looking normal—at least for now—because it’s politically risky to show visible decay at a park that draws national and international attention. Smaller places close or hang in limbo, and in the longer term they’re exactly the kinds of sites the administration treats as expendable. Former NPS director Jonathan Jarvis has warned that, on the current trajectory, the Park Service could be “pretty seriously damaged, you might almost say dismantled,” within a few years unless Congress intervenes. After a week of driving between half-open and fully closed monuments, that no longer sounds like exaggeration.

It’s easy to rally public support for Yosemite or Yellowstone. It’s much harder to get people worked up about a volcanic cinder cone in northeastern New Mexico, a ruined adobe fort on the High Plains, or mission churches slowly crumbling. But those are exactly the kinds of places that show what’s at stake: Capulin explains, in one compact cone, the volcanic forces that shaped an entire region; Fort Union and Salinas Pueblo Missions document the collision of Indigenous civilizations, Spanish colonialism, U.S. expansion, and trade networks that once tied this remote landscape into a continental economy. Treat the Park Service as a bare-bones tourism agency whose job is to keep the most popular viewpoints open, and these sites become hard to justify. See it instead as a long-term commitment to history, ecology, and shared public space, and they become indispensable.

The shutdown is temporary. The choices being made under cover of that shutdown—about staffing, funding, and which places are worth saving—are not. The real test will be whether, ten years from now, places like Fort Union and Salinas are still being stabilized and interpreted by a national park staff, or are just unmanned ruins with a state sign and a shrinking maintenance budget. What happens next depends less on how many people show up for sunset at White Sands than on whether we’re willing to defend the quiet, “unprofitable” corners of the system that add so much of to its meaning.

https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/the-trails-evolution-and-artistic-lineage

In 2014, my brother-in-law Nhon—a dedicated bicyclist—first introduced us to the Coyote Creek Trail. The photo from that first outing pictures my family: my son up ahead, my wife, and Nhon. We returned occasionally after that, weaving small loops together, moving through the corridor more as participants than as observers. Back then it felt quiet and ordinary before I began to look at it with the sustained attention it would later demand.

Twenty images from The Trail are at the end of this post. More here.

I have been photographing along the Coyote Creek Trail since that day. The span is long enough that the place has changed, and my understanding of what I was photographing has changed as well. When I began, I didn’t think of the work as belonging to any particular photographic lineage. I was simply drawn to this improbable sliver of nature threading through San Jose. It’s the sort of space most people pass without looking twice: neither wilderness nor park, neither city nor refuge—yet somehow all of them at once.

Where the wild and the human blur

At first, I was consciously seeking the wonder of nature close to home—the kind of everyday astonishment I’ve written about elsewhere, the recognition that awe doesn’t require remoteness but attention (as discussed in The Trouble with Wilderness). I brought to the trail the aesthetic I learned from large-format work—attention to detail and tone, careful framing, hoping to make a modest urban corridor feel as worthy of regard as a mountain peak. In that sense, I was borrowing a vocabulary forged by Ansel Adams and other large-format masters: conservation through elevation, using a “national park” visual language to argue for the value of the local.

What interested me next was urban ecology in the simplest sense: how living systems persist inside a built environment. I thought the work would remain there, in that quiet observational space. This early attention to urban ecology aligns with works that find depth in overlooked, human-adjacent nature—Robert Adams’s Los Angeles Spring, attending to green fragments inside a metropolis, and John Gossage’s The Pond, tracing meaning along the shallow edges of neglected land. It also echoes the broader current opened by New Topographics, which reframed the human-altered landscape: a turn away from heroic wilderness toward the human imprint on the everyday, often near home, where restrained observation reveals how the built and the natural interpenetrate. Two of the New Topographics photographers, Joe Deal and Frank Gohlke used the square format to signal a break with romanticism. My project had accidentally walked itself into the company of books about place instead of books about nature. Even then, though, I sensed that the trail was not just habitat. It was also passage—an artery for movement and necessity, not just for wildlife.

Long-term projects have a way of outgrowing their original premise. You return enough times and eventually you stop seeing “landscape” and start noticing patterns of use: where people stop and rest, where a footpath splits into a private shortcut. Around 2019, I began paying more attention to traces of people living along the creek—small structures, campfires, piles of salvaged material and detritus. At first I photographed only what was left behind: presence without portraiture. I didn’t yet connect that to larger questions. I simply realized that the trail was no longer only a landscape. It was a living negotiation—between shelter and displacement, between public amenity and necessity. Only later did I understand that this shift—photographing traces of habitation—had precedent. Anthony Hernandez worked this territory in Landscapes for the Homeless in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, photographing the spaces occupied by unhoused people, often after they had moved on. Stepping back further, the broader current of social landscape photography—from Stephen Shore to Joel Sternfeld—had already shown how American places can be read as social facts, where the look of the land is inseparable from how we live in it. And in parallel, contemporary ecological art—from Richard Misrach to Subhankar Banerjee—demonstrated how environmental form is bound up with politics. Recognizing that lineage made me look differently at what I had been gathering.

A contested space

From 2014 to 2022, the work centered on environment and traces. I rarely photographed people directly except on family outings. On that first day we paused—my kids exploring nearby, my brother-in-law taking a drink, my Chihuahua dog Peanut riding calmly in the basket for a break from running half-marathons with me—and I made what I thought was simply a family picture (#11 in the sequence below, which was curated by Judy Walgren and is notably different from the one in my post introducing the project). Years later, in the context of the project, that image read differently: as Judy pointed out, it’s also a picture of privilege—of comfort that travels with you almost invisibly. What began as a private moment became a measure against which other lives on the trail could be seen. That recognition sharpened what I was seeing elsewhere on the trail. I noticed the camps, the movement of belongings, the precarious architectures of daily life—but I continued to photograph at a remove, still believing, perhaps out of habit from my work in parklands, that landscape alone could carry the whole story.

By 2023 that no longer felt true. After being away from the trail during the first phase of the COVID pandemic (when I wrongly assumed it wouldn’t allow enough social distancing), I returned to find a place that felt altered. Some encampments had changed or vanished, though the major policy inflection would come later, after the 2024 Supreme Court decision. The changes seemed abrupt partly because I’d been away; the gap compressed time and made absence more visible. I realized that if I didn’t photograph people while they were still living and moving along the corridor, the project would describe only erasure, not presence. For years I had photographed only what remained after the displacements. In 2023, I understood that the people themselves needed to appear before the record collapsed into aftermath.

I understood that to be contemporary, the project needed people. Photographers do not always know, when they start, which tradition their work will eventually join. I certainly didn’t. The tradition I had stepped into—stretching from Evans through Robert Adams to Hernandez—has always understood landscape not only as topography, but as the sum of choices, failures, and pressures embedded in a place. The trail is not just a walking route; it is a ledger of civic intention. Who feels welcome there, and who is pushed out, is not accidental—it is policy made visible. I also saw that the work would be incomplete without acknowledging the full range of users: joggers like me, cyclists, dog walkers, children in strollers. To understand the trail only through homelessness would miss that it is also recreation and ordinary pleasure.

It was only after including people that the shape of the project snapped into focus. The trail began to read not just as environment, but as public space—a corridor negotiated daily by different users. That realization also placed the project alongside work in which geography becomes portraiture: most famously in Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi, where the river is not scenery but a conduit through which human lives take shape in the frame.

From there the lineage widens into artists who treat public space as a social stage: Eugène Atget, patiently mapping Parisian streets, thresholds, and shopfronts; Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York; Helen Levitt’s street theater; William Klein’s charged sidewalks; and the generation of Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Joel Meyerowitz who made the American street a laboratory for seeing—spaces where presence becomes a way of saying “I have a right to be here.” Alongside this, the documentary engagement with marginalized communities—from Mary Ellen Mark to Eugene Richards—models an ethics of attention and proximity that shaped how I approached the trail’s more vulnerable residents. Including people made that conversation explicit. Once people entered the frame, the entire project accelerated. I was no longer photographing environment alone, but relationship—between place and the lives unfolding within it.

The Long View

When you return to the same ground for a decade, your photographs are not taken from above (as in “parachuted photojournalism”), they are taken from within. I was not passing through the trail as an outsider collecting scenes. I was learning how it lives at different speeds: the speed of a runner, of a hawk circling over the wetlands, of someone building a fragile shelter before the next abatement.

Returning again and again, I found that photographing the same stretches of trail over years was not repetition but accumulation. The project gained duration as narrative: a record of change, in both land and lives. This, too, has a lineage. Camilo José Vergara documented urban America over decades from fixed vantage points; William Christenberry photographed Hale County across a lifetime; Mark Klett made landscape and time inseparable, developing a rephotography practice that I’ve adopted on the trail—returning to precise locations, seasons, and angles so that small shifts become legible as part of a larger arc; and, close to my own background in large-format work, Jem Southam has used color and patient seasonal return to register incremental change along rivers, ponds, and coasts.

This is where long-term practice becomes more than endurance. It becomes comprehension. Some readers assume that photographing close to home is merely a practical choice, but the opposite is true: the closer the place, the longer it takes to see it clearly. The Coyote Creek Trail is not the heroic landscape of the national parks where I worked for decades. Here, nothing announces itself. Meaning has to be found, not encountered. It accumulates through attention. This, too, is part of its lineage. Gossage knew that “minor” landscapes reveal major truths. Adams knew that ecological questions live inside the ordinary. Christenberry knew that repetition is a form of fidelity.

Small place, universal concerns

One unexpected realization was how few major photographic works are about trails specifically — not parks, not streets, but official multi-use corridors where walkers, cyclists, and unhoused residents occupy the same narrow strip. A trail is very different from a park. A park is a destination. A trail is passage, friction, negotiation. Sternfeld photographed the High Line in Manhattan before it became a park. The Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago, the BeltLine in Atlanta, the Promenade Plantée in Paris have all been documented, but as architecture, infrastructure, or planning success story—not as a contested space or lived social ecosystem.

Once I realized this, the project stopped feeling like a local study and began to feel like something larger—a contribution to a lineage that had room for it. I renamed the “Coyote Creek Trail Project” simply The Trail to point beyond one locale—to the universal question of our place in the land—and as a quiet nod to John Gossage’s The Pond, whose generic title helped transform a specific site into a larger field of meaning. When people arrive in the frame, time arrives with them. The trail was never “nature with intrusions”; it was always a place whose ecologies are entwined with human pressures. Wild pigs navigate that corridor alongside people hauling water or bicycle commuters. Only when I began photographing people did the larger arc become visible: The Trail as a portrait of use—the use of land, of policy, of daily endurance. The environment no longer read as backdrop, but as a stage of consequences.

Although I began photographing The Trail in 2014, the core of the work belongs to the past several years. It became a 2020s subject the moment the social stakes could no longer be separated from the environmental ones: habitat or habitation? What keeps me returning is the same thing that keeps certain projects alive across decades: the understanding that a place is not a static scene but a moving concern. Ecological restoration is a part. Displacement is another. Recreation is a third. The trail holds all three, simultaneously.

We are past the era when “the environment” meant pristine distance. Ecology now exists where people do. If there is a contemporary analogue to wilderness photography, it is not deep in roadless acreage—it is here, in the contested ecologies where people with vastly different stakes meet the same piece of land. That is why I no longer see The Trail as a shift away from landscape photography, but as its continuation into the present tense. This is what a 21st-century landscape looks like: shared, politicized, unevenly distributed, and constantly negotiated.

I have photographed national parks for a quarter century, in places defined by scale and remoteness. The Coyote Creek Trail is the opposite: small, proximate, woven into the city. Yet it has revealed itself to be no smaller a subject because the questions taking shape here are urgent: Who belongs in public space? What counts as nature? Where ecological care collides with social cost?

Lineage matters

Some artists resist speaking about lineage, as if acknowledging predecessors might dilute originality, or as if dialog meant forfeiting your voice. I’ve come to feel the opposite: lineage enlarges the work. It clarifies its place in a broader conversation. Knowing where your work sits in the history of the medium is a form of consciousness. A photograph is always, in some way, a reply: to what came before, to what is happening now, and to what might come next. I didn’t know at the outset which conversation The Trail belonged to.

Looking back now, I can name the line of descent: Atget’s patient cataloguing of public space; Evans’s synthesis of people, structure, and place; Christenberry and Klett’s return to the same ground across years; Robert Adams’s attention to the edges of sprawl; Gossage’s belief that overlooked land carries narrative; Hernandez’s recognition that public land is also social shelter; Soth’s understanding that a landscape becomes human when its people are seen.

This is not a list of influences in the conventional sense. It is more accurate to say that, over time, my work found its ancestors. The lineage arrived not as aesthetic imitation, but as recognition.

The trail has taught me that persistence is a form of seeing. What begins as attention becomes duration; what endures becomes meaning. Ten years in, I understand that I was not just photographing an overlooked corridor—I was walking into a history, and eventually I recognized the door I had entered. The Coyote Creek Trail is a physical path, yes, but for me it has also become a path through the medium itself: from urban ecology to social presence, from surface to structure, from looking to witnessing. If a lineage emerged, it is because the place required one. In that sense, this project did not start with history, but it ended by joining it.

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/manufacturing-national-park-nature

Forming the backbone of North America, the Rocky Mountains have long stood as an emblem of wilderness, with Glacier National Park in Montana dubbed the “Crown of the Continent.” Yet north of the border lies an even more spectacular expanse, protected within four contiguous Canadian Rocky Mountain parks. Glacier delivers vertical drama, not because its peaks are higher, but because the Going-to-the-Sun Road grants visitors direct access to towering walls and deep valleys. Its namesake glaciers, however, are nearly gone—reduced to remnants of what once numbered more than a hundred. Of the Canadian parks, Banff National Park is the most famous and visited, thanks to its early establishment, extensive infrastructure, and postcard landmarks like Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, and Peyto Lake. Banff still retains significant icefields, but Jasper National Park surpasses them by far. Anchored by the Columbia Icefield, Jasper reminds visitors that this is still, quite literally, an Ice Age landscape. The largest of the Canadian Rocky Mountain parks, Jasper feels less developed and less visited, its sheer scale offering a different register of awe.

My encounters with Jasper National Park are split across time. In the early 1990s, I traveled there in winter multiple times to climb frozen waterfalls along the Icefields Parkway. As I retuned in the summer of 2005, my main tools were no longer ice axes, but rather a pair of cameras, with an early full-frame digital camera complementing my trusty 5×7 inch view camera. I set out to make the same kind of landscape photographs I had created in the U.S. national parks. It had been suggested that Canadian parks could serve as a natural extension of the Treasured Lands project, and Jasper’s immensity and diverse scenery certainly fit that mold. Lakes, dramatic peaks, glaciers, icebergs, waterfalls were places made for large-scale landscape photography. But one set of photos from the Athabasca Glacier stood apart: people scattered over ice, human scale incongruously set against geological scale. At the time I didn’t think of them as more than curiosities. Only later did I realize they pointed toward a different way of seeing national parks: one less about pure scenic wonder and more about how we represent, stage, and experience nature.

In the late 2000s, my exposure to William Cronon’s critique in The Trouble with Wilderness forced me to question foundational assumptions: that wilderness is a separate, pristine domain; that nature’s truest form is remote; that human presence is inevitably tainting. His work pushed me toward valuing wonder in places close to my home, to recognizing human histories in landscapes, and to respecting ecological realities rather than idealized myth. Still, there was more missing: how nature is made visible. It’s not enough to say that wilderness is a myth. We need to see how that myth is reinforced. That gap is what J. Keri Cronin’s Manufacturing National Park Nature (2011) helps fill. The book uses Jasper National Park as its primary case, providing specific archival illustrations, but its arguments resonate broadly. Cronin demonstrates that “national park nature” is not something passively encountered but actively produced. By this term, she means a system of visual organization—ways of seeing shaped by photography, tourism promotion, and cultural values—that determines what counts as “nature” in the parks. Within this system, certain images are elevated to canonical status: sweeping vistas emptied of people, charismatic wildlife portrayed as emblems of wilderness, recreational activities framed as solitary communion. At the same time, other realities are suppressed: roads, lodges, signage, human–animal conflict, Indigenous presence, and the infrastructures that make visitation possible. What emerges is not simply nature as it exists on the ground but a carefully curated construct—an aesthetic and cultural product manufactured through photographs, brochures, and promotional imagery that both reflect and prescribe how parks are understood. Wilderness, recreation, and wildlife are not timeless truths but constructs within “national park nature,” each an axis along which representation is organized. Seen this way, national parks are not only ecological spaces but aesthetic ones. Their look—the way vistas are framed, wildlife depicted, and recreation staged—is already curated, more like an exhibition than untouched wilderness.

The book has affected my work profoundly. The photographs I made of the Athabasca Glacier now feel less like odd departures and more like early signals. Cronin shows how promotional images of the Columbia Icefield routinely emphasize its scale and purity while leaving out the very infrastructures that make it accessible. My own pictures inverted that convention: not only did they show crowds scattered across the ice, but also the distant lines of ice-coaches and parking lots, dwarfed by the glacier yet unmistakably present, and even the Canadian flag framing the scene. Together these elements expose what Cronin calls the gap between what is pictured and what is concealed. If official imagery manufactures a vision of pristine wilderness, my photographs insist on the lived reality—a landscape where national symbolism, mass tourism, and the spectacle of ice are inseparable. They still rely on the scenic tradition, depending on scale, light, and spectacle, but they also critique it by insisting on what official imagery leaves out. The tension between continuity and critique has become central to how I now think about photographing parks. My subsequent major long-term project America’s Best Idea, which I began in the same year that Cronin’s book was published, 2011, and is still in progress, owes much to her work—not because of the specifics of what gets included or excluded in images, but because she made clear that national parks are mediated spaces. Her analysis provided the conceptual tools to recognize that parks are never experienced directly or purely, but always through layers of representation, infrastructure, and cultural framing. The park infrastructure— visitor centers, signs, roads, amphitheaters—in America’s Best Idea is no longer treated as distraction to be minimized but as a central feature, making visible the apparatus by which “nature” is mediated.

National parks are more than geography; they are cultural objects, aesthetic modes, and institutions with histories. Photography has always been central to that construction—not a neutral mirror, but a force that shapes what we believe these places are. As Cronin shows, camera images are especially powerful because they appear objective. In Jasper, illustrated guidebooks, postcards, and tourist snapshots created a specific way of seeing the Canadian Rockies: vast, untouched, and pristine. Pictorial conventions taught visitors to frame out other tourists and to privilege empty peaks over parking lots. Once developed, put into albums, and circulated among friends, these images further solidified the myth. What is left out—the crowds, the infrastructure, Indigenous histories, the management of wildlife—matters as much as what is shown, because these absences shape expectations, policy, and public imagination. To photograph parks is therefore to take part in their ongoing manufacture, a responsibility that calls for awareness of visual conventions and a willingness to reveal the complexity that lies behind them. Authenticity may not rest in the absence of human presence but in acknowledging the entanglements—natural, cultural, and constructed—that truly define “national park nature.” Seen in the larger history of photography, Cronin’s book makes clear that to photograph parks today is to take part not only in conserving their images but also in questioning how those images are made.

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/park-anniversaries-celebrated-in-visitor-guides-and-stamps

On the 109th anniversary of the National Park Service (NPS), this article continues my examination of the official NPS visitor guides over the years, focusing this time on how anniversaries have been commemorated in their design. If you haven’t done so, reading the previous installments of this series will provide context.

Part 5 of an on-going series: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | to be continued

Major milestones — whether for a single park or the entire system — have often been occasions for special logos, taglines, or commemorative editions. Yet the way these anniversaries have been acknowledged has varied widely, depending on the era, the park, and the prevailing design standards. From early, locally driven additions to covers, to the tightly controlled visual language of the Unigrid era, these choices reveal not only changing graphic priorities but also how the NPS has chosen to tell its own story – reinforced by United States Postal Service stamps whose messaging echoes the NPS. By tracing these commemorative markings across time, we can see how the visitor guide itself has been used as both a tool for orientation and a vehicle for celebration.

Yellowstone @ 50 (1922)

In 1922, the National Park Service (NPS) was just six years old. Budgets were small, and there was no mature publicity apparatus to turn Yellowstone’s 50th anniversary into a system-wide event. Commemorations took place within the park: a July 14 gathering at the historic Washburn Expedition site, theatrical presentations at Lake Lodge reenacting President Grant signing the park’s founding bill, and some national press coverage. But there was no coordinated national campaign. The visitor guide booklet for that year mentioned the anniversary only in a subtitle, and the occasion was not framed as a “semi-centennial of the national parks”.

1922 Visitor guide for Yellowstone National Park. This is the favorite item in my collection because of the early date, anniversary, and the historically significant cover photograph (discussion).

Yosemite @ 100 (1964)

The Yosemite Centennial marked 100 years since the Yosemite Grant Act, in which Abraham Lincoln set aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove for preservation by the State of California — a precedent many historians consider the conceptual forerunner of the national park idea, even though Yosemite National Park wasn’t created until 1890. The celebration remained park-specific, but it drew national attention to the principle that public lands could be permanently protected for public benefit. Coming two years before the NPS’s 50th anniversary and amid Mission 66 improvements, it showcased Yosemite’s modernization and gave the NPS a chance to test strategies later used in broader campaigns. The 1964 visitor guide folder introduced a dramatically revised design to emphasize the occasion. By constrast, in 1990, the centennial of the establishment of Yosemite National Park, the unigrid visitor guide did not mark the occasion.

1963 (left) and 1964 (right) Yosemite National Park visitor guides.

NPS @ 50 (1966)

By 1966, the NPS had grown into a large, unified bureaucracy managing parks nationwide. The 50th anniversary coincided with — and served as the culmination of — Mission 66, a decade-long modernization program explicitly planned to conclude in the anniversary year. The milestone drew system-wide focus, including a US Postal Service stamp and publicity around more than 100 new visitor centers and related facilities. The 50th was as much a celebration of institutional maturity and infrastructure achievement as it was an anniversary. Many brochures from the years leading up to 1966 included a short paragraph about Mission 66 (see some of them), but the special 50th-anniversary emblem appears on a more limited set and was added by stamping the brochures afterward — I’ve seen it only on a few park brochures. Besides that stamp, there did not appear to be an official 50th anniversary logo. The Parkscape logo, first used in an exhibit celebrating the NPS’ 50th Anniversary was subsequently adopted as the NPS emblem as explained in the previous installment.

Top: Two copies of 1966 Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park Visitor guides with the “1916-1966” stamped differently on the cover. Bottom left: Two copies of 1966 Crater Lake National Park, with and without the stamp. Bottom right: 1966 Haleakalā National Park with “1916-1966” stamped on the back page.

Left: 1966 Yellowstone National Park Visitor services brochure from NPS with “1916-1966” printed on the cover. Unlike the main park visitor guides which are more enduring, those additional brochures included only yearly (or sometimes seasonally) specific information about services provided by the park. They are nowadays issued on newsprint. Right: Grand Canyon and Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks brochures issued by park concessionaires with “1916-1966” printed on the cover, which are also about services. Photos courtesy of Craig Bailey from NPTC.

National Park Service 1916-1966 First Day Cover with the Parkscape logo.

Yellowstone @ 100 (1972)

By 1972, Yellowstone’s creation had been reframed as the birth of the “national parks idea,” a story with global resonance. The NPS treated the centennial as a system-wide commemoration — “100 Years of National Parks”, the first major system-wide commemoration of national parks. The campaign goals were to reinforce the parks ideals, deepen conservation messaging, encourage cooperation, and foster international dialogue. The government also wanted to highlight the American heritage of national parks during a period of environmental awakening (Earth Day had just begun in 1970). The centennial aligned with a push to expand the park system and promote recreation as a patriotic, unifying activity.

Badge with 1972 Centennial logo.

The distinctive logo was a stylized graphic representing Old Faithful geyser. It can be seen on a badge with the left-aligned words “National Parks Centennial 1872-1972” inside the circle, a combination that I could not locate anywhere in print: at the small size the graphic was commonly printed, the words would not have been legible. Instead, in brochures, the words were printed outside of the logo.

1972 joint map brochure for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

In the years 1972 and 1973, in addition to their respective pocket guides, the two neighboring Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, once considered for inclusion into a single enlarged park, issued a joint larger brochure (4×9″ versus 3 1/4″ x 5 5/8″ for the pocket guides) featuring a map of each park on each side, but no other visitor information – an also taken by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The 1972 edition of the map brochure for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks included the centennial logo and the left-aligned words on the cover. Besides those two parks, the logo and inscription appeared on pocket-guide brochures throughout the system, with the words in a single line.

National park pocket guides with the centennial logo and inscription printed.

Of the 39 national parks then in existence, 36 used the pocket-guide format; 28 featured the centennial logo and text prominently at the bottom of the plain panel. As far as I know, two park brochures were printed without those markings, but had them added through a stamp. By the way, if you haven’t heard of Platt National Park, it was the black sheep of the national parks. In 1976, the NPS eventually managed to merge it with Arbuckle Recreation Area into the more appropriately named Chickasaw National Recreation Area.

Two national park pocket guides with the centennial logo and inscription added afterward by stamp – with words on a single line or four left-aligned lines

Only seven lacked it entirely. Three of those seven — Hawai‘i Volcanoes, Haleakalā, and the newly redesignated Arches — used non-pocket-guide 4×9″ formats whose photo-illustrated covers were not conducive to the mark; the others (Isle Royale, Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth Cave, Wind Cave) used pocket guides but, for reasons unclear, did not receive the markings. The centennial logo and tagline was also similarly featured in the pocket guides for other park units across the entire system. Besides the visitor guides, two special 4×9″ brochures were issued. Yellowstone The Flowering of an Idea focusses on the history of establishing Yellowstone National Park in 1872. Centennial Events, with its 116 pages, reflects the magnitude of the celebration, listing events state by state, as well as other memorabilia and publications, including the USPS stamp set.

Two special NPS brochures issued for the centennial. Photos and information courtesy of Craig Bailey from NPTC.

Unlike the 1966 commemoration that consisted of a single stamp, the USPS released a series of four stamps plus a quartet, each dedicated to a different park site: Yellowstone and Denali National Parks, and three other national park units: Cape Hatteras National Seashore (the first unit with such a designation), City of Refuge National Historical Park (standing for all 170 historic sites; now Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park), and the oddball Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts (a new dimension in the NPS, centered around an outdoor amphitheater; now Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts). This approach mirrored the NPS strategy that year: the Yellowstone centennial was not just a local milestone but a system-wide moment, emphasizing the breadth of the national park idea.

1972 National Parks Centennial First Day Covers. The phrase ‘Parks, Man and His Environment’ reframed Yellowstone’s anniversary as a forward-looking charge: parks were no longer only about scenic preservation, but about the intertwined future of people and nature. Text in the back of the envelopes says of Yellowstone:

As the first national park it is symbolic of the entire national park movement which has resulted in the creation of national parks in more than 100 nations

In the National Parks Centennial the nation celebrates the 100th anniversary of a uniquely American idea, which has taken root around the world to the lasting benefit of mankind. Now in an era increasingly concerned with the thoughtless squandering of our natural birthright, National Parks can help us to renew our precious contacts with the natural world that gives and sustains life. One hundred years ago a group of Americans worked hard to assure that this nation would preserve its heritage of natural beauty and wonder. The National Parks Centennial seeks both to honor and to perpetuate the results of their vision and courage.

Mount Rainier @ 100 (1999), Rocky Mountain @ 100 (2015), Hawai‘i Volcanoes @ 100 (2016), Grand Canyon @ 100 (2019)

Mount Rainier’s centennial in 1999 marked 100 years since its establishment as the first national park in the Pacific Northwest. While not as significant as Yellowstone’s anniversary, it reflected a growing trend of treating individual park milestones as branding opportunities. In Rainier’s case, the NPS allowed a small centennial tagline on its Unigrid brochure — consistent with standards that generally avoid adding agency or partner logos to maintain the design uniformity sustained since Massimo Vignelli’s Unigrid system was adopted in 1977. Like several other parks (see examples), Rocky Mountain NP had a widely used official centennial logo in 2015, but it did not appear on its Unigrid; the same was true for Hawai‘i Volcanoes in 2016 and Grand Canyon in 2019. Other national parks celebrated their centennial but did not feature a centennial tagline on their unigrids. Unlike visitor guides from the early days of the NPS that changed each year, the unigrid designs spanned multiple years. Whether a park added a centennial tagline to its Unigrid typically depended on local choice, reprint timing, and budget.

Unigrid brochures with a Centennial tagline (Rocky Mountain National Park issued one for the year 2014 and another for the year 2015).

NPS @ 100 (2016)

By 2016, the NPS had become a national cultural brand managing more than 400 units. The centennial campaign was a fully professional, multi-platform effort aimed at engaging the next generation of visitors and stewards. Its flagship initiative, Find Your Park, sought to broaden inclusion through media partnerships, special events, and targeted outreach. More so than in 1972, an extensive range of private entities released commemorative products, showcasing their enthusiasm for the national parks and the NPS. Wanting to add my modest part to the celebration, I timed the publication of Treasured Lands for 2016, as The New York Times noted:

this year the centennial of the National Park Service has been the occasion of exhibits, documentaries, presidential proclamations and many books. The most glorious of these is TREASURED LANDS

2016 Centennial logo.

The centennial logo’s main element was the number 2016, where “0” was replaced with a light-green arrowhead outline whose full version was the NPS emblem, accompanied by matching green lettering for the word “centennial”. It was flown in space in celebration of the National Park Service Centennial. The arrowhead outline was also part of National Park Foundation and National Park Service logos, the former becoming the only partner logo featured on Unigrid visitor guides.

Dual National Park Service and National Park Foundation logos

While rather bland, the three new designs were meant to provide a fresh new look as the NPS tried to connect with new audiences. Their simplicity made them versatile, as they could stay legible while used small in various media. However, one medium was the centennial logo did not appear were the individual park Unigrid brochures. The only enduring document where I could find it is the system-wide map and guide. Although the logo is included, it would have been easy to miss, as it did not appear on the front page, but rather on the back page, in a discreet position. That’s nowhere near the level of prominence the 1972 geyser logo had on most pocket guides, where it often sat bold at the bottom of the cover.

Top: 2011 National Park System Map cover, unlike individual unit unigrids, the date of issue is printed on the cover. Middle: 2016 National Park System Map cover, date of issue is the NPS centennial day. Bottom: Verso of the 2016 National Park System map, note the Centennial logo on the bottom right corner

The USPS issued 16 stamps: 10 national parks and 6 other national park units. This number was double from 1972, however, none of them mentioned anything about the centennial. Even the pane featured just the title ““National Parks”; neither the centennial logo nor even the words “Centennial” or “1916–2016” appear anywhere. So while 1966 and 1972 stamps functioned as explicit commemoratives, the 2016 issue was positioned more as a celebration of parks in general rather than a formal centennial mark. It was consistent with the NPS’s broader approach that year, where the centennial logo wasn’t used much on Unigrids. Instead, it was featured in posters, banners, rack cards, and especially in digital media — reflecting a marketing-driven era, where the centennial was celebrated through outreach and engagement rather than through enduring, printed symbols.

USPS 2016 national parks stamp panel.

2016 Theodore Roosevelt National Park First Day Covers featuring QT Luong’s photograph. Note the deviations from the official centennial logo (which features a light green empty arrowhead). While stamps are issued by the USPS, those envelopes were not official.

For some park visitors, the word “stamp” has a different meaning. In National Park Service visitor centers, you’ll find cancellation stamps available for free use at an information desk or stamp station. These are rubber ink stamps (similar to passport stamps) designed for the Passport to Your National Parks program, but anyone can use them in notebooks, guidebooks, or other printed materials – I like to stamp my unigrids. The Passport to Your National Parks® program, launched in 1986 by Eastern National (a nonprofit partner of the NPS; now America’s National Parks), is a popular collectible activity that encourages exploration of the entire park system. Visitors can purchase a small “passport book,” divided into regions of the country, and then collect cancellation stamps at each park they visit. Many travelers treat it like a travel log, filling its pages with dated impressions and sometimes supplementing them with stickers or notes.

Each cancellation stamp is site-specific: it shows the park’s name, location of the stamp (large parks have more than one visitor center each with own stamp), and date of visit in a circular design. These do not have anything to do with mailing. They are purely commemorative, meant to provide a tangible record of your visit. The National Parks Travelers Club (NPTC) is a group with a considerable collective knowledge about about all aspects of visiting various national park units. Many members are so dedicated to collecting those stamps that the club URL is parkstamps.org. Many park units offer special stamps to commemorate their anniversaries. During the year 2016, all the park units offered a special centennial stamp where the date of the visit was replaced by “1916-2016” and the location of the stamp replaced by “NPS Centennial”. NPTC member David Kroese managed to personally collect 432 of them during an epic trip chronicled in his book The Centennial. Those commemorative stamps supplement rather than replace the regular stamps, marking the milestone in small cultural artifacts that visitors carry home. Other souvenirs included rectangular lapel pins featuring the Centennial and Find Your Park logos on top and the name of the issuing park unit. Kroese visited all the 248 park stores carrying those in 2015-2016, and framed a complete set of them. The display was circulated in many park units, and I happened to see it at Carslbad Caverns National Park in May 2025.

Map detail with regular and 2016 NPS Centennial cancelation stamps for Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Read an account of the brief visit during which I collected them.

Complete collection of 248 (each) Centennial and Find Your Park lapel pins assembled by David Kroese. (Click to enlarge)

Yellowstone @ 150 (2022)

While the 100th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park was positioned as a proxy for all national parks, leading to national celebrations, its 150th anniversary was treated as a regional event. The context was also different: the 150th took place in the wake of the 2016 NPS Centennial, which had already absorbed national attention, and the U.S. was still in a period of pandemic recovery. The event was branded as “Yellowstone 150”, not tied to the NPS as a whole. Instead, emphasis was on tribal sovereignty, inclusion, and ecological stewardship of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, reflecting contemporary values rather than mass tourism. The NPS marked it like some of the other individual park 100th anniversaries (and Yellowstone 125th anniversary) issuing again just a commemorative unigrid with a tagline – bringing this article to a full circle.

1997 and 2022 Yellowstone National Park unigrid brochures.

These anniversary emblems remind us that national parks are as much cultural constructs as natural landscapes, a perspective that increasingly guides some of my photographic work — and one that underscores the inseparability of people and nature.

PS: I am still trying to complete my collection and I have numerous duplicates, so if you’d be interested in donating, trading, selling, or buying vintage brochures for any NPS units that are currently national parks, please let me know.

Part 5 of an on-going series: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | to be continued .

https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/the-trek-zanskar-1989

In the summer of 1989, I set foot in Asia for the first time—a formative journey that expanded both my view of the world and the role photography could play in it. A few years earlier, college friends at Polytechnique had introduced me to climbing, and I had taken to it immediately. Photography followed naturally: a way to share the beauty and scale of the high peaks with those who couldn’t be there. Before that, my only venture beyond Europe was a brief stint at a military skydiving camp in Morocco—memorable, but worlds apart from what lay ahead.

In the winter of 1987, beginning what would become a productive decade of ice climbing, I enrolled in a course offered by Godefroy Perroux, a pioneer and central figure in French waterfall ice climbing. Relaxed and generous, Godefroy had a wide circle in the climbing community. One of his friends, Richard, came along to assist. Among the attendees was Chantal Mauduit, who would soon make her mark in the mountains. We all stayed at Godefroy’s cozy cabin near the Alpe d’Huez ski resort. The time we spent together led to friendships, and eventually Richard invited Chantal and me to join him for a Himalayan trek.

Click to enlarge

As a young mountaineer, I dreamed of climbing in the Himalayas. But for my first visit, I thought it wiser to begin with a trek rather than attempt a summit. Part of the Himalayas – including Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world – are in India. Richard proposed we cross the Himalayan range from north to south via Shingo La, one of the range’s more accessible passes—free of steep slopes or glaciers, yet still above 5,000 meters (16,000 ft). From the pass, we’d attempt a nearby undocumented 6,000-meter peak. Though modest compared to Himalayan giants, it stood over 1,000 meters higher than Mont Blanc, the highest summit in Western Europe.

Our trek would take place in Zanskar, a remote high-altitude valley on the eastern side of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, now part of Ladakh. Home to about 10,000 people and isolated by mountain barriers, Zanskar had seen little outside contact. Ladakh had been closed to foreigners until 1974 due to regional border tensions with Pakistan and China. Even as tourism to Ladakh increased through the 1980s, it was mostly to Leh and the wide Indus River Valley. Zanskar remained far off the main circuit, inaccessible to all but the most determined travelers. In the first years after reopening, the area saw only a few hundred tourists pass through its capital, Padum. If Zanskar was known in France at all, it was largely thanks to the work of photographer Olivier Föllmi, reportedly the first Westerner to walk the frozen Zanskar River, resulting in his book “The Frozen River” (1990). One of the coldest inhabited areas on Earth, Zanskar is cut off by snow for eight months of the year. But from mid-January to early February, the frozen Zanskar River forms a perilous hundred-mile ice route between Leh and Padum.

Click to enlarge

Just reaching the starting point of the trek became one of the most intense experiences of my first 24 years. When I stepped off the plane in New Delhi, groggy with my first experience of jet lag, I was plunged into a world unlike any I had known—a dense, a dense chaos that marked my first encounter with a developing country. Richard planned two consecutive treks—one with Chantal, and one with me—so I had a few days on my own before we met. The conditions at the cheap hostel where I stayed were a shock, but it was on the street that I felt most overwhelmed and bewildered: the chaos, colors, tuk-tuk and crowd noises, smells, heat, sacred cows in the traffic, and the open, confronting poverty. Still, I felt temporarily good when I summoned the will to try street food—abundant vegetarian fare that turned out to be both new and delicious. As if that weren’t enough stimulation, I took a day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, riding a rickety local tour bus while Bollywood videos blasted on the overhead screen, competing with the roar of the wind through open windows.

After managing to locate the Indian Airlines office and purchase a one-way ticket to Leh, I finally reunited with Richard. From there, we boarded a large truck bound for Padum, Zanskar’s main town, lay 62 miles from Leh as the crow flies. Though 276 miles away by e roads 1 and 301, the journey took three days. Narrow, rough, winding, and subject to landslides, the road from Kargil to Padum had been built in 1978 and was navigable only by the sturdiest vehicles. Our truck carried a dozen passengers in its open bed, without seats or roof. On the unpaved road, we were quickly caked in dust. I began to suffer from diarrhea—likely from eating fruit sold by street vendors in Delhi—and Richard scolded me for my ignorance of precautions to be taken in developing countries. He mentioned that Chantal had been similarly sick and had resorted to a steady diet of pills. With no practical way to stop for toilet breaks, I stopped eating altogether until we arrived in Padum. Between the illness, the rough transport, my fasting, and the high elevation of 3,600 meters (12,000 feet), I arrived barely able to walk.

Padum was the southermost point of the road. All travel beyond had to be on foot. Richard left for a solo week-long trek while I recovered in a basic guesthouse there, making endless visits to a hole-in-the-ground toilet – very sustainable as it doesn’t waste precious water and generates compost. After a few days, I had regained enough strength for a short excursion to the Sani monastery (where a bite from a feral dog gave me days of anxiety), followed by a four-day round-trip trek to Phuktal Gompa (monastery). That remote sanctuary, a honeycomb of fortress-like structures clinging to the mouth of a giant cave above a gorge, resonating with the sound of bells, horns, and chants, remains one of the most spectacular and affecting places I ever stayed.

Ladakh, once a Himalayan kingdom, shares more geography and culture with Tibet than with the rest of India. Hearing the Dalai Lama state during his (current) 2025 visit that Tibetan Buddhist culture is better preserved in Ladakh than in Tibet itself – where it has been eroded by Chinese coercion – reminded me just how intact that world still felt when I walked through it decades earlier. More than 90% of the population practices Tibetan Buddhism. As a child, my parents regularly took me to a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in the outskirts of Paris, across the valley from the Polytechnique campus. I still remember the gentle scent of incense, the delicate lotus motifs, and the serene statues. In Ladakh, by contrast, the gompas felt darker and more elemental. Murals of fierce deities with bulging eyes, spinning prayer wheels, and the dim glow of butter lamps created an atmosphere at once visceral and mysterious. Every village has its monastery with hauntingly vivid, centuries-old artwork, and trails are lined with chortens — Buddhist shrines that I learned to pass clockwise, in respect. I memorized a few mantras, especially essential in Tibetan Buddhism, to help pace my steps. They reinforced the meditative and sometimes monotonous nature of walking all day long through such austere landscapes. Ladakh is a high-altitude semi-desert in the rain shadow north of the Himalayas. Outside the irrigated barley and lentil fields near villages, little greenery grows. Encounters on the trail were rare, and none of them included foreigners. Conversation was limited to signs and gestures, but the warmth I felt from the villagers transcended language. That people living in such difficult conditions could radiate such calm contentment seemed to speak to the spiritual depth of their beliefs. Realizing that this pre-industrial culture, although so different from mine, had an equal validity, I developed great respect for it and tried to learn as much as I could.

Looking back now, I see that this early exposure to another way of life—where material means were few, but meaning was abundant—planted the seeds for the themes that would guide my work later. Landscapes are not empty stages but interwoven with the lives, beliefs, and survival strategies of those who dwell in them. Resilience and reverence can coexist in places where life is carved from scarcity. To inhabit a landscape is to enter into a compact with it—one that modern development often breaks unilaterally.

After Richard and I explored the open valley surrounding Padum, we began the 90-mile trek to Darcha, a town south of the main Himalayan crest. The route followed the valleys of the Tsarap and Kurgiak Chu rivers. It wasn’t a recreational trail but the only connection between scattered villages, with foot and horse the only means of transportation. In the early stages, we slept and ate in those villages. Services were minimal, as inhabitants lived in near-complete self-sufficiency based on farming and cattle-rearing. A few locals offered us a place to sleep—bare rooms with dirt floors—and simple meals of roti (flatbread) and dal (lentils), often with tea flavored with yak butter of indeterminate age. In this zero-waste society, yaks are rarely eaten; they are too essential for farming, milk, transport, fur, and even dung, the main source of fuel in this treeless region.

Because we carried a rope, crampons, ice axes, and other mountaineering gear for our summit attempt, we hired a porter who also ferried extra food and camp necessities—essential as we ascended into higher terrain with no permanent habitation. We each hiked at our own pace and typically met up at the night’s camp. Only later did I realize that what we were doing wasn’t backpacking in remote terrain—it was trekking in the truest sense: relying on local knowledge and hospitality, moving through a living cultural landscape rather than immersing in self-contained solitude.

Since the Himalaya Range acts as a barrier shielding Ladakh from most of the monsoon, the weather had been mostly warm and dry until we reached the Shingo-La (pass). As clouds gathered, we pushed upward on snowy ridges to about 5,800 meters (19,000 ft) according to Richard’s altimeter, but with no weather forecast and rising uncertainty, we decided to abandon the summit attempt. Descending into Himachal Pradesh, we were struck by how the landscape changed. On the southern side of the Himalayas, the green valleys of Lahaul replaced the dry mineral terrain of Ladakh. Eventually we reached Darcha, where the road resumed. From there, it was a bumpy but mercifully seated ride to Keylong. We spent a few days exploring the area, including the Kunzum La (pass) connecting Lahaul from the Spiti Valley. After misjudging a side ascent, I was caught by nightfall and sheltered with a welcoming sheep herder who opened his encampment to me without words. Afterward, we continued to Manali where we parted ways, with me taking the bus for another long day to New Delhi.

The journey remains one of my most formative experiences. Though set in the mountains, it pushed me far beyond my comfort zone and into contact with a way of life entirely different from my own. Until then, most of my photography had focused on mountaineering in the Alps. This was my first real cultural immersion—and the moment my interest toward human geography and place-based storytelling began. I went to Zanskar chasing altitude, but what stayed with me were not the peaks—it was the quiet durability of life in their shadow. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that encounter altered my sense of what photography could do: not just depict grandeur, but bear witness to the fragile balance between place, people, and time.

During an entire month in India, I had exposed only ten rolls of film. I hadn’t yet learned that film is cheap compared to travel. I was dismayed that due to a loading mistake, the first one, which included the Taj Mahal, was blank – two decades would pass before I would return with a much different camera. At the time, I shot Kodachrome, a slide film reputed for color but unforgiving of exposure errors. Since I didn’t bring a tripod, low-light photography, including all interiors, was not possible. My knowledge of photography was still lacking, and most of the photographs from this trip were technically or compositionally flawed. But unlike early digital media, the physical slides remain fully readable, and their color barely faded. Their slightly aged palette proved surprisingly apt at restoring memories to a vivid status. The place names and dates that I had written on the slide pages formed an accurate record.

Those slides, imperfect as they are, belong to a lineage of exploration photography that once sought to make remote places visible to others. But the ethic of that practice has evolved. Today, I no longer see photography as an act of “revealing the untouched,” but rather as a way of witnessing change—and asking what is at stake in that change, especially for those who live closest to the land.

While retracing the trip for this write-up, I turned to online maps, and was shocked to discover that the once-remote and rough trail from Padum to Darcha that we trekked is now a paved two-lane road. Although some parts had been completed earlier, the final stretch over Shingo La only opened last summer. A tunnel under the pass is under construction to make the route passable year-round. Further north, the traditional frozen Zanskar River route is now also a paved road, completing what is now known as the Zanskar Highway. I am grateful I undertook the journey when it still was remote, raw, and difficult. My images—though imperfect—have become not just personal memories but historical traces, glimpses of a world before modern infrastructure reached it.

In 1989, the region still saw very few outsiders. I met no other foreigner during my four-day walk to Phuktal and encountered only a handful in Padum itself. Zanskar still felt utterly remote— not just geographically, but culturally. The journey felt as much an act of endurance as of curiosity, far removed from today’s fly-in trekking culture and convenience tourism. Since then, the number of visitors has increased by a factor of twenty. Mass tourism introduces outside values that risk unraveling traditional ways of life, inviting young people to equate Western lifestyles with progress—even when those models conflict with local needs and ecological wisdom. Few reap the greatest benefits, while the heavy social and environmental costs are borne by many. The opening of roads brings opportunity—but also loss. This tension mirrors what I’ve since encountered closer to home. My early experience in Zanskar showed me how landscape and culture are inseparable. That insight continues to guide me.

http://www.terragalleria.com/blog/the-living-colorado-photographing-the-grand-canyon-from-the-river/

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The Colorado River is the main waterway of the American Southwest. Over millions of years, it has carved the Grand Canyon, the most spectacular intersection of water and stone, time and motion. The Grand Canyon segment of the Colorado is not only its most dramatic stretch but also the longest and wildest continuous white-water route in North America.

A journey down this river is both intimate and monumental. When you step into side canyons — as explored in the previous post — you find sheltered grottos, delicate gardens, and sculpted narrows. But from the main channel, you perceive the canyon as a single, unified force: a vast cathedral of rock, rising in near-vertical walls that soar 5,000 feet above. The river at your feet feels alive, breathing and shifting beneath you, oscillating between languid stretches and explosive rapids. This is not merely a passage through a canyon; it is a passage into the deep memory of the land, where each bend and each rapid holds a fragment of geologic and human history.

A rapid is a section of river where the water surface becomes turbulent due to a sudden increase in gradient, flow constriction, or the presence of obstacles like rocks or ledges. Rapids are among the most vivid evidence that a river is alive. Before Glen Canyon Dam, each major flood reworked the canyon’s entire rapid system. The river flow was wild and unpredictable, shaped by natural cycles. Now, controlled flows have sharply reduced flood peaks, and daily releases often fluctuate for power generation. The rapids persist but have become more fixed. Between Lees Ferry (mile 0) and Diamond Creek (mile 225), there are approximately 160 named rapids, with a dozen considered Class V.

The international scale of river difficulty rates rapids from Class I to Class VI based on technical complexity, risk, and rescue difficulty. Class I rapids are easy while Class VI is considered unrunnable. If a Class VI rapid is consistently navigated without catastrophic outcomes, it is reclassified as Class V. The scale is exponential — each step up reflects a significant increase in difficulty — and can vary with water levels. Unlike ocean waves born of wind and distance, which travel, rapid waves stand still, shaped by rock and collision — fluid yet fixed, chaos anchored in place. In the biggest rapids of the Grand Canyon, standing waves can reach 10 to 20 feet in height, depending on flow conditions.

As I expected, our large motorized raft was more stable than the oar raft I rode a decade ago. Light and responsive, the smaller watercrafts are lifted by waves. This results in considerable vertical motion that can be dangerous if one is not careful, as I unfortunately learned by experience. But what I didn’t expect is that while the weight and speed of the larger motorized raft help them plow smoothly through waves rather than riding them, this often sends walls of water crashing directly over the bow. Compounding this effect, guides often aim directly into waves rather than trying to avoid the biggest hits. In addition, AZRA’s particular seating arrangement calls for passengers to lower and wedge themselves between the gear boxes during the largest rapids. While this eliminates any risk of passenger accident, the lower position makes you even more exposed to water onslaught.

The motorized rafts are about 35 feet in length. How wet you get depends largely on where you sit. At the rear, it’s mostly splash, comparable to what you’d experience at an amusement park water ride. In the front, you get soaking wet. On the first day, I found myself sitting in the front because I was the last on shore after helping participants to embark Sitting at the front offers the best photographic opportunities, since your view ahead is entirely unobstructed. On the second day, I offered to switch seats with participants, but seeing how wet I got — and on a first day that didn’t feature big rapids — nobody took me up on the offer, so I ended up sitting at the front for the rest of the trip.

Since this is a river trip, maybe one should expect to get wet. The reason that is consequential is that the Colorado’s water is surprisingly cold year-round, regardless of season and air temperature. This is because it is fed from the bottom of Lake Powell via the Glen Canyon Dam. At the start, that temperature is a bone-chilling 45°F. Absorbing solar radiation and mixing with warmer side streams, it reaches about 50°F at Phantom Ranch, midway the trip, and then 60°F at Lake Mead.

Even on a warm day, once you are soaked in water that cold, it can take a while to warm up, as all your layers remain wet. On the day we tackled the big rapids of the Upper Granite Gorge in cloudy weather, I was barely able to keep warm despite wearing one of the heaviest fleece jackets underneath a mountaineering-grade shell. Unlike paddle vests that have rubber seals, that top-of-the line jacket was not sealed at the wrists and neck. The massive sheets of water from the larger rapids send water through those openings that end up soaking everything. Even though wearing thermal long-sleeve underwear tops (synthetic, as cotton is very slow drying) may sound overkill in May, those were essential to stay warm while being constantly drenched. Seeing how pale I looked after disembarking, my friend Régis urged me to go change quickly into dry clothes instead of joining in the human chain helping unload the raft.

There is not an instant of boredom on the river. I kept my river guidebok within reach, hoping to read between rapids — but the canyon never allowed it. Every moment demanded attention, demanded presence. Every bend hides a new surprise: sometimes it’s the way light ignites a wall into glowing amber or carves deep shadows into mysterious depths; other times it’s a sudden shift in water color, a hidden eddy, or a new rock face emerging. The interplay of light, water, and geology transforms each stretch into a unique, fleeting world. No two river bends are ever the same — each moment feels like a discovery.

Photographing from the raft reminded me of aerial photography, where you are also operating from a moving platform. Besides the technical necessities such as a high shutter speed, the challenge is to anticipate compositions. On a charter flight it may be possible to ask the pilot to fly back, but on the river, there is mostly no going upstream. While the position of the canyon walls does not change rapidly as you float, the foreground elements do. Those include the river itself, and it is the prominent presence of the river that distinguishes landscape images made from the raft from those taken from the shore. Those photos are more challenging to make, but they capture the essence of a river trip and cannot be made from land.

Given what happened ten years ago, this time I did not plan to photograph during the rapids and therefore did not bring an amphibious camera system. Influenced by the images of dories — small, lightweight wooden boats pioneered by Martin Litton that dance dramatically through rapids — in The Hidden Canyon (1977), John Blaustein’s book with text by Edward Abbey, I also assumed that a motorized pontoon raft would not provide enough excitement in the rapids to justify the risk. However, after seeing how safe AZRA’s seating arrangements were — and the amount of water coming directly at us during the rapids — I tried to capture splashes with my antiquated phone, which as the only waterproof camera I had brought, was still better than nothing.

Wanting to photograph every moment until the last possible instant before rapids up to medium size, I would hurry to stow my main camera safely just before the raft hit the waves. It’s a nervy way of working — trying to hold on for as long as possible while making sure the camera isn’t exposed when a crashing surge arrives. On smaller rapids, your body can act as a shield; on bigger ones, you need to stow the camera in a waterproof enclosure. Although a Pelican case closes quickly, its weight and hard sides make it a hazard if not properly secured. The waterproof Lowepro DryZone bags can sit on your knees, but their drysuit-style zippers are hard to operate quickly enough. This leaves a small dry bag as the most practical option. The outfitter-provided day-use dry bag (18″ wide × 24″ long, 30 liters) is adequate. There’s always a trade-off between access and protection — on occasion I’ve stowed two cameras in it, although that is far from ideal. I’d rather risk a scratch or two on the cameras than potentially miss a moment.

This method of working made it possible to photograph at the tongue of rapids — the V-shaped patch of smooth water at the head of each rapid. There, just before the chaos, the river gathers itself. The current tightens into a dark, glassy V, flanked by choppy riffles or foam. It resembles a liquid arrow drawn taut between canyon walls or boulders, converging into a single path. The surface often turns mirror-like, paradoxically calm — a compressed lens of force just before release. This smoothness sometimes captures distorted canyon reflections. Then, at the tongue’s tip, the water folds and drops into chaos: breaking into crashing waves, frothing haystacks, and explosive turbulence. Visually, it marks a threshold — the river’s transition from order to disorder, from grace to violence — pulling the eye, and the raft, into the heart of the rapid. This is my favorite moment to capture on the river, but the risks to the equipment are high, as even in a medium-size rapid, a towering wave may follow immediately after.

To float the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is to realize that, despite all efforts to tame it, the river remains fiercely alive. When Glen Canyon Dam was completed, some in the Bureau of Reclamation claimed that the Colorado below it was already a “dead river” — its natural cycles severed, its floods controlled — as justification to propose additional dams in the Grand Canyon. But Time and the River Flowing (1964) was published precisely by the Sierra Club to counter that narrative, revealing through photography and words that the river’s spirit persisted in every eddy, rapid, and shifting reflection, ultimately helping stop those projects. Edward Abbey famously called for removing Glen Canyon Dam in The Hidden Canyon (1977), a demand that once seemed radical but now enters serious conversation as reservoir levels fall and restoration is reimagined. This dynamic between wildness and human control quietly threads through much of my work, from remote national parks to urban waterways. Although they are traditional color landscapes, the photographs presented here engage with questions of intervention, resilience, and our evolving relationship to the natural world. Photographing from the raft is not just about capturing grand views; it is an act of bearing witness to a living force that still shapes the American West — and a call to recognize and protect what remains untamed.

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Anyone peering into the Grand Canyon for the first time is struck by two immediate, shocking facts: it comes without warning, and it is absolute. There is no soft transition, no gentle slope that prepares you. One moment you’re on the rim, the next you’re staring into an immense and unfathomable chasm—a vertical mile deep and layered with two billion years of Earth’s history. But as staggering as this view is, it is also detached. Monumental, yes, but distant.

To truly understand the canyon’s complexity, one must take a closer look—and that closer look is not available from the rim. From above, the Grand Canyon can feel overwhelming in scale but paradoxically simple in appearance: a vast, continuous chasm with layered rock receding into hazy distance. But that view flattens its richness. The real Grand Canyon isn’t a single space—it’s a world composed of thousands of distinct micro-landscapes, each shaped by variations in rock type, erosion, water flow, elevation, and exposure to sun and wind.

There are alcoves where hanging gardens flourish in perpetual shade, and just around the bend, scorched terraces where nothing survives. Slickrock domes rise beside narrows barely wider than your shoulders. Ancient lava flows cross horizontal sedimentary layers, and entire amphitheaters are carved into soft shale and limestone. Rock that appears static from afar turns out to shimmer with embedded fossils, mineral streaks, or desert varnish when seen up close. Even the soundscape shifts constantly—from deafening rapids to dry, echoing silence.

Photographically, this means that the Grand Canyon is not one landscape but a multitude—revealed slowly, intimately, and often unexpectedly. The complexity isn’t just geological; it’s sensory, ecological, and spatial. To engage with it requires movement through it, time within it, and the flexibility to respond to what the canyon offers moment by moment. That’s why being at river level, day after day, changes your relationship to the place. You stop seeing “the canyon” and start seeing canyons, alive, and endlessly varied.

Sure, it’s possible to backpack into the canyon, and doing so offers an unmatched sense of immersion – and effort. But it can also be grueling, especially if you bring serious photography equipment. When I hiked from the North Rim to Deer Creek (a waterfall minutes away from where our raft beached) via Thunder River with my view camera in the early 2000s, such was the amount of water to be carried that despite not packing a tent – exposing myself to a bothersome rodent on the last night of my outing – I started with a seventy pound backpack. On my way out, I climbed over five thousand feet. Even if you have the stamina and skill, your access remains limited. Trails are few, and they constrain your movements to established routes.

A river trip offers something radically different: easy access. From the river, you are no longer confined to the rim’s distant view or the narrow confines of a corridor trail – as are called the main trails, the Bright Angel, South Kaibab, and North Kaibab Trails, which together account for over 75% of all trail usage in the park. You travel through the heart of the canyon, often along sections unreachable by foot. Sculpted narrows, lush hanging gardens, ephemeral waterfalls, ancient rock art panels, and side canyons hidden from above—these are features only the river unlocks.

For our journey, we traveled by motorized raft. While this meant giving up some of the quiet solitude, sense of adventure, and intimacy of oar-powered travel, it offered a major advantage: speed. In spring, the Colorado River flows at about four miles per hour. A motor rig also reaches four miles per hour, resulting a speed of eight miles per hour. In contrast, an oar trip travels at half that speed, meaning more time in transit. With the motor, we reached each day’s destinations faster, giving us significantly more time on land, where the richest photographic opportunities awaited.

There are certainly compelling images to be made from the raft, and I’ll explore those in the next installment. But there are inherent limitations: you can’t stop for long, the boat is always in motion, and shifting your viewpoint is limited. On land, you reclaim control. You can take your time, explore angles deliberately, get close to your subject, work with a tripod, and use slow shutter speeds. Some serious photographers barely shoot while floating. They wait for the landings.

In some sense, every stop holds potential. At one location chosen for lunch simply because the cliffs offered shade, two of us wandered a short distance and discovered a hidden pocket of white sand tucked beneath a deep overhang of red sandstone. While the rest of the group ate and rested, we happily photographed in that quiet space. Moments like that are a reminder that in the Grand Canyon, beauty isn’t limited to the named landmarks. But even considering only the well-known sites, there are far more photographic opportunities than a single trip can accommodate. That’s especially true if you’re trying to optimize your time around the quality of light, as we were on this photo-centric expedition. Coordinating to be at certain locations at specific times was one of the more challenging aspects of the trip and required close collaboration with our river guides. Take, for example, the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers, where we wanted to be at sunrise. Camping is prohibited for miles upstream of the confluence, so the only way to photograph it at sunrise is to camp directly across the river. To secure that rare campsite, we arrived by midday the day before. The next morning, we ferried across at first light—leaving camp set up—and returned for breakfast after the shoot. That return trip, against the current would have been impossible without a motorized raft.

The images below are presented in chronological order, following the journey as it unfolded. Some of the highlights include North Canyon with distinctive swirling textures in the rock and sculpted pour-off – I was surprised to see an opaque green pool at its base where on my previous trip a clear reflection pool stood; the vast alcove of Redwall Cavern, estimated by John Wesley Powell to hold 50,000 people; the turquoise waters and travertine terraces of the Little Colorado River as well as the mixing of waters at its confluence with the Colorado River; Shinumo Creek, with its waterfall nestled in a sculpted canyon; Elves Chasm, a lush oasis where a waterfall plunges into an emerald pool beneath hanging gardens; Blacktail Canyon, a narrow slot cut deep into ancient Vishnu Schist that reveals some of the oldest exposed rock on Earth; Deer Creek, where a powerful ribbon of water tumbles from a hidden gorge; Havasu Canyon, a paradise of turquoise streams winding through sheer limestone cliffs; National Canyon, known for its layered narrows and stark transitions between rock types; and Pumpkin Spring, a vividly colored mound of mineral deposits that oozes warm, sulfur-rich water directly into the Colorado River near water-sculpted potholes carved in a surreal swirl of rocks. Besides those known highlights, the campsites themselves revealed unexpected photographic opportunities, both by day and night—sometimes a few steps from the river’s edge, other times reached by climbing to little-used vantage points. In approaching these images, I sought to move beyond familiar views, focusing instead on the canyon’s layered textures, shifting light, and the sensory variations that emerge through movement and time. Rather than depicting the Grand Canyon as a single, fixed landscape, these images aim to evoke the complexity of place as it is experienced from within—a space of constant transformation, where immersion reveals what distance cannot.

Part 2 of 3: 1 | 2 | 3

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On a photography expedition such as the one I co-led from May 1 to May 11 this year, participants come to capture the Grand Canyon’s awe-inspiring landscape and spend ten days immersed in its depths. But the Grand Canyon, like other national parks, is not just a wilderness. It is also a place of people—those who work, journey through it, and who, in the process, have made it the special protected place that it is today.

A river trip through the Grand Canyon is not just an adventure; it is a shared experience. For ten days, we lived in close proximity, helping each other with the myriad tasks required by life along the river. Once the raft was beached, camera bags, tripods, overnight bags, tents, sleeping kits, mattresses, chairs, tables, and kitchen supplies all had to be unloaded. This was done most efficiently by forming a human chain, passing objects from hand to hand. That was the extent of the work required, as the river guides managed everything else with practiced efficiency. The camaraderie we developed extended beyond our group. Each time our faster motorized raft overtook an oar-powered party, our guides paused to exchange greetings and plans, and participants from both groups waved cheerily. There are no reservations for campsites along the river, but rather than competition, there is collaboration. Our guide, a seasoned professional, considered it poor form to race ahead of oar parties struggling against headwinds just to claim a site. Fortunately, other groups understood that photography goals took us to a specific destination, and with one exception, we always secured our preferred camps.

What makes this journey extraordinary is not only the scenery but the simpler rhythm of life it enables. Unlike remote wildernesses into where cell towers now often reach, the steep canyon walls block all signals. Disconnected from the modern world, we found ourselves immersed in a quieter one. Aside from the fairly quiet hum of the raft’s motor, the only sounds were the roar of the rapids, the splash of the river, and the voices of our companions. No traffic, no alerts, no background noise. Even time itself lost relevance, replaced by a natural cadence shaped by daylight. On such a trip, we do not simply see the canyon—we live and breathe in it.

The day began with a coffee call at 5:30 a.m.—announced by a guide blowing a conch shell, which requires surprising skill to sound properly. After breakfast, we’d break camp, pack our gear, and load the boat while watching for morning light. We were on the river by 8 a.m., typically stopping for hikes and lunch before arriving at our next camp by mid-afternoon. That left time to walk, photograph, or simply sit in the quiet before dinner around 6:30 p.m. The meals, prepared from fresh ingredients, were unexpectedly excellent for a trip in the wilderness. The river-running industry has refined its logistics to an art, including handwashing and dishwashing stations, toilets, and food storage. By 8 p.m., the canyon went dark. Those not venturing out for night photography were happy to retreat into tents under the stars. One night, when I offered instruction at 2 a.m. – because of the near-full moon that set at 4 a.m. – only one participant showed up.

Although nearly five million people visit Grand Canyon National Park each year, about 25,000 raft the Colorado River through the canyon. Of those, over three-quarters are on guided commercial trips such as ours, which was guided by Ed and Finger from Arizona Raft Adventures (AZRA) with the assistance of Doug. Private permits are highly competitive, with fewer than one in fifteen applicants receiving a permit via lottery. Add to that the logistics and whitewater skills required, and it’s clear that such a journey is not easily accessible. That said, a guided trip remains demanding—but manageable. I still lost weight despite eating more than I usually do. Most people can enjoy it: I was the second youngest in our group, and our oldest participant was a 78 year old. Not everybody was in great shape, but we all made it. Despite the high traffic relative to other backcountry rivers, the campsites were remarkably clean—thanks to a strict “carry-it-out” ethic and careful toilet management. The National Park Service enforces tight control over the river corridor: no more than 150 people are permitted on the river each day, and no individual is allowed more than one trip per year.

That scarcity makes the experience even more resonant, especially considering the river’s symbolic weight. Although the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is arguably the most iconic river in the country, it is neither designated as a Wild and Scenic nor part of the Wilderness system. And yet, it played a central role in shaping modern environmentalism. Although relatively few have floated the river, those who have left an outsized mark. In the 1960s, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation proposed two dams—one in Marble Canyon, one in Bridge Canyon—that would have flooded parts of the river corridor. Had those dams been built, everything we experienced on our trip—the sound of clear water cascading from hidden grottoes, the quiet glow of sunlight filtering into narrow stone chambers, the long arcs of beach where we woke to birdsong and watched the cliffs catch fire at dusk—would have been submerged or erased. Not just the features of the land, but the entire experience of a living, breathing river would have been drowned beneath still water. The structures were designed to be invisible from the South Rim overlooks to avoid detection by tourists. But the rise of river-running tourism changed the political landscape. Ironically enabled by the controversial Glen Canyon Dam upstream, this growing community of river travelers had come to see the canyon not only from above, but from within. The Grand Canyon was not only its iconic vistas, but the full river stretch between Lee’s Ferry and Lake Mead. River runners formed an alliance with environmentalists. The cornerstone of the successful campaign to stop the dams was the Sierra Club’s 1964 book Time and the River Flowing. Combining François Leydet’s impassioned prose with photographs by Philip Hyde and others, the book argued that the Grand Canyon was not just landscape. It was a living river. The campaign’s success in 1968 was a watershed for the modern environmental movement—proof that public imagination, art, and activism could protect even the most threatened places. The Grand Canyon dam fight was more than a battle over a stretch of river. It was about redefining how Americans value nature—not only as a spectacle, but as an experience. In using photography, publishing, and public engagement to influence policy, that campaign set a template for the environmental movement that continues to this day. Yet it was never just about geography—it was about access, experience, and human connection. That same spirit echoes in the photographs here: people not as intruders in nature, but as participants in its story.

In joining this river trip, we were not only following the water’s path—we were following in the footsteps of those who fought to keep it free. To float between these canyon walls is to understand the stakes of that victory: the stillness, the roar of the rapids, the shared work of living in rhythm with the river. Our presence echoes that earlier generation of photographers, writers, and ordinary citizens who believed that beauty alone was a form of advocacy. In choosing to witness and photograph the canyon from within, we, too, participate in a tradition that has shaped how America understands its wild places—not from above, but from inside them. By turning the camera toward those who share this journey, I hope to underscore that conservation is not just about places—but about how people live in, care for, and remember them. In composing these photographs, I sought to capture both the gestures of daily life and the moments where human scale and the vast geology of the canyon meet — an ongoing dialogue between presence and place. These images are part of my evolving interest in the human presence within natural systems—not as separate from the land, but as shaped by and shaping it in turn.

For me, this journey also marked a return to the origins of my work in public lands. I’ve increasingly turned my lens toward the spaces where nature and human life intersect—not just the untouched, but the entangled. Yet this trip reminded me that even the most celebrated landscapes remain vulnerable, and that their preservation owes much to those who saw experience itself as worthy of protection. To photograph the canyon today is not only to depict a place of grandeur—it is to acknowledge the legacy of those whose images and stories helped save it, and to carry that sensibility into new terrain where the line between wilderness and civilization is no longer so clear.

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https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/photograph-from-the-coyote-creek-trail-series-honored-at-cpa/

Using the singular URL photography.org, the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) is the second oldest members’ photography gallery space in the country, tracing its roots back to and occupying the original Carmel gallery space of the Friends of Photography, which was launched by Ansel Adams and others in 1967.

Each year, CPA organizes a members’ juried exhibition. Unlike photo competitions judged by photographers with limited credentials, CPA’s calls for entry are juried by gallerists and curators. For the 2025 edition, the juror was Allie Haeusslein, the director of Pier 24 Photography – the largest exhibition space in North America dedicated solely to photography. I was familiar with her name, since she wrote the text for Chris McCaw’s book featured on my contemporary BW landscape photography book list.

I have entered only a handful of photography contests in my life, and the last time I did was more than a decade ago. This time, I was motivated to do so because of the new directions taken by my work. Ann Jastrab, the CPA’s executive director had been generous of her time with me, so the entry fee was a way to support the organization. Since the call is open only to CPA members, I didn’t expect it to be that competitive, but it turned out that more than 2,400 entries were received, for 45 gallery exhibition slots. I was therefore honored that my image titled Home Comforts, from the series Coyote Creek Trail was not only selected, but also won an honorable mention. My national parks nature photographs have been the subject of many solo exhibits on both U.S. coasts and abroad. However, this represents my first win in a contest of significance, and my first exhibit in a fine art photography context. It is never too late to try!

In addition to the 45 photographs exhibited in the gallery, you can also see 45 more photographs selected for online exhibit here. It is a diverse set both in terms of images and in term of process, and for someone used to see mostly travel and nature photography, quite an eye-opener. Several of the works, like the one below, are mixed-media pieces that are not adequately reproduced in 2D. In fact, most of the prints need to be seen in person to fully appreciate.

Artists in attendance, photo courtesy of Ann Jastrab

Home Comforts was included in my initial presentation of the Coyote Creek Trail project, but I am going to show more to provide some context and connections. The image whimsically encapsulates the project by gathering three elements with a luxuriant natural backdrop.

The Mercury News reports that the city is considering reforms to address the thousands of abandoned shopping carts retrieved each year from streets, parks, and waterways—objects officially classified as urban blight. Yet along the Coyote Creek Trail, shopping carts are a basic element of survival, not debris. They function as mobile infrastructure: makeshift wagons that carry everything from firewood, water, and recyclables—redeemable for a modest city payout—to personal belongings and even furniture. In a landscape without storage, where permanence is impossible and displacement frequent, the cart becomes both tool and lifeline, a vehicle for mobility and resilience. Seen this way, these wheeled skeletons of consumer culture speak volumes about the parallel economies and systems of adaptation that flourish at the city’s margins. They are symbols of how people claim space, transport necessity, and build lives in motion.

Many encampments along the trail are furnished with scavenged objects, but none are more poignant than the couch. Each discarded sofa, dragged through brush and bramble, is an attempt to carve out a space of dignity amid the precariousness of life outdoors. In these makeshift living rooms, the boundaries between home and wilderness collapse: plush fabric is bleached by the sun, cushions sag under the weight of rain, and armrests become perches for cats. They are reminders that the desire for comfort and belonging persists even in the most inhospitable conditions. In a region defined by the contrast between extraordinary wealth and visible deprivation, the sight of a couch in a thicket beside a creek makes visible the human urge to create home.

Pets are a quiet but persistent presence along the trail. Many unhoused residents keep dogs for protection and companionship, while others speak of the painful choice not to, knowing they can’t afford to feed another mouth. Most shelters do not allow animals, forcing many into a wrenching decision between safety and staying with a beloved companion. Cats are ubiquitous but eerily skittish—I’ve photographed wild pigs and foxes at closer range. The one in Home Comforts is the closest I’ve ever come. I later learned from a Vietnamese woman who feeds and traps them for neutering that many were abandoned along the Coyote Creek Trail by San Jose residents. Like their human neighbors, they live in the margins, surviving on what others have left behind.

https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/national-park-week-2025-what-were-really-up-against

Each April, National Park Week is a time to celebrate the beauty, history, and spirit of America’s public lands. But in 2025, celebration must be paired with vigilance. The threats facing our national parks and public lands aren’t just abstract — they are deliberate, coordinated, and accelerating beneath the surface. From budget cuts and purges within the National Park Service to secretive rollbacks of national monument protections, we are witnessing an unprecedented unraveling of America’s conservation legacy. This is not just about politics. It’s about the future of public lands as places held in trust for everyone. To meet this moment, the first step is to understand what’s happening — and that is the purpose of this report.

February 3, 2025. Corn Springs, Chuckwalla National Monument, California.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, among that fraction of the electorate aware of the policies outlined by Project 2025, a significant majority opposed them. The Republican presidential candidate distanced himself from that document, saying he had nothing to do with it. By some strange coincidence, as President of the United States, his administration has been aggressively implementing many of its policies, among many others that he did not campaign for. Project 2025 is a 900-page detailed policy blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and supported by a coalition of right-wing organizations. While its ambitions are sweeping and pose a threat considerably more serious than impacts on our public lands, several elements are directly relevant to them. Those core tenets include executive power consolidation, purging the federal workforce, eliminating climate and DEI programs, deregulation and industry empowerment, and privatization of public goods.

Hollowing the National Park Service

In late March, on the sidelines of the Yosemite Conservancy meeting in Yosemite Valley celebrating the organization’s 100th anniversary, I discussed Horsetail’s Firefall (adorned with a distress flag this year) with a long-time resident of the valley. He recalled that for several years, the phenomenon was witnessed by just a few locals who casually commented on the quality of the display of the previous evening. Then groups started to show up and the event grew in popularity. The park service needed to restrict parking and traffic, as well as close off riverside areas to prevent ecological damage. The next step was requiring a reservation 24 hours a day to drive into Yosemite during late February weekends. Visitors do make a great deal of effort to witness a fleeting monument in nature. We both remembered the collective cheers that accompanied the light show and agreed that despite the adverse effects of crowding, it was great to see that people love their parks.

March 21, 2025. Out There screening in Yosemite. Photo by Gabriella Canal

Beyond anecdotes, the data shows that national parks have never been as popular. Since its founding, one of the goals of the National Park Service (NPS) has been to increase its constituency, which helps get the parks more funding and support. Therefore, every year, the NPS proudly publicizes visitation and economic impact numbers. After the momentum loss caused by the pandemic, 2024 broke the visitation record. Yet the NPS directed staff to keep quiet about it. Why?

Could it be because in early 2025, in a matter of a few weeks, the NPS lost 12% of its personnel through mass firings, hiring freezes, and induced early retirements? Two district courts subsequently ruled that the DOGE-initiated firings, indiscriminately citing underperformance despite workers having earned positive reviews, were illegal. Half were re-instated, but that first firing wave was just the beginning. The administration is eyeing a 30% payroll reduction. The Washington Post reported on leaked report mentioning workforce cuts of 25% at the Department of the Interior. Although designed to be less visible to the public by targeting regional offices rather than individual park units, they would devastate programs that support dozens of units.

The NPS was already understaffed. Before the latest cuts, in the last 15 years, NPS staff numbers have decreased by 20%, while visitation has increased by 15%. Besides surging visitation, the issues of deferred maintenance, climate impacts, and growing threats to biodiversity contribute to making the situation a crisis. Together with the staff reductions, the administration terminated leases and proposed reductions to the NPS budget, slashing funding for conservation programs, scientific research, cultural resource protection, and public engagement initiatives. Elon Musk backtracked on DOGE savings goals from $2 trillion to $160 billion. However, he has also wasted $135 billion correcting his mistakes. Watchdog groups can only verify $12.6 billion in savings, which represents 0.17% of the 2025 U.S. federal budget. Countless government services have been lost for basically nothing in return. In particular, the NPS budget request for 2025 was $4.8 billion, while it estimated that park visitors generated $50.3 billion in total economic input. If it doesn’t make sense from an economic point of view to reduce an investment that pays ten-fold, maybe there are other deliberate goals in dismantling the NPS, such as a plan to “deconstruct the administrative state”.

Project 2025 views the agencies, rules, and regulations designed to protect the nation’s citizens as an obstacle. The NPS cuts eliminate institutional resistance, undermine the capacity to protect, and suppress public awareness. The NPS has long harbored a core of career professionals committed to conservation science, cultural integrity, and public service. The 2025 purges are part of a broader effort to replace mission-driven public servants with politically compliant actors. By gutting the agency, the administration is reducing its capacity to act as a steward of protected lands. This paves the way for industry to exploit weaknesses in oversight. The NPS plays a critical role in public education through its interpretive programs, exhibits, and publications. By defunding those efforts, the administration limits the public’s ability to understand what is being lost. The goal is not improved management – it is managed decline, as a prelude to corporate capture. The inevitable impact of the staff reductions is maintenance backlog, reduced park services, and degraded experience for park visitors. Impacts are already felt in dozens of locations. Yosemite National Park is closing backpacker campgrounds. Carlsbad Caverns National Park has suspended all ranger-guided tours, meaning you cannot experience an undeveloped cave (Slaughter Canyon Cave) nor see the most decorated section of Carlsbad Caverns (Kings Palace). Florissant Fossils Bed National Monument is closed two days per week.

In the long term, if the government won’t be able to provide adequate services demanded by visitors, then those services must be subcontracted to private companies – at a higher cost. Project 2025 views public lands not as ecological or cultural commons, but as underutilized real estate. Defunding the NPS effectively repositions parklands for removal from government control and “returning” them to the states. Unlike the federal government, the states have no mandate to keep parklands public. Once they are in private control, they are gone forever. The end goal is not improved management. It is managed decline, followed by corporate capture. We’re watching the deliberate hollowing out of one of the most respected public institutions in the U.S.— not to reform it, but to render it incapable of defending the lands it was created to protect.

Eviscerating National Monuments – Again

In 2017, the administration launched a sweeping “review” of 27 national monuments designated since 1996. Led by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the process was highly controversial—both for its motives and execution. The review targeted monuments for being “too large” or impeding development. It resulted in recommendations to alter the protections of several monuments. Bears Ears was reduced by 85%, and Grand Staircase by nearly half—opening millions of acres to potential mining, drilling, and grazing. Those actions sparked my work on Our National Monuments where I grew attached to those overlooked and less-traveled lands. While the widely publicized but biased “listening tour” that Zinke embarked on hardly featured the voices of environmentalists, scientists, outdoor recreationists, or Indigenous nations, the 2017 review at least included a 60-day public comment period, during which over 2.8 million Americans submitted feedback, with more than 99% favoring continued protection. Though ignored by the administration, the outpouring demonstrated massive public support for national monuments and sparked ongoing litigation and resistance.

Fast-forward eight years. It is now the administration’s second rodeo. They have learned from their first attempts, and this time they have a blueprint with Project 2025. While the 2017 process was widely criticized, it still operated under a veneer of public process. In contrast, the 2025 approach sidesteps accountability entirely, leveraging executive authority to quietly revise or rescind protections without public input. Project 2025’s core objectives include centralizing power in the executive, dismantling environmental protections, erasing climate and equity from public lands policy, and privatization.

A radical element of Project 2025 is its proposal to consolidate federal power under the presidency, reducing the independence of federal agencies and civil servants. The secretive nature of the 2025 monument review—no public comment period, no consultation, no transparency—is consistent with this move. Decisions are made top-down, bypassing norms of democratic engagement and scientific review. In February 2025, my inbox was filled with alerts from various conservation organizations about a new “review” of national monuments. When I read Order No 3418 “Unleashing American Energy” issued on Feb 4, 2025 by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum with a 15-day deadline and the accompanying press release, I was surprised not to find the words “national monument” in the 7-page document. Yet, the conservation organizations had parsed it accurately when they denounced it as a renewed attack on our national monuments. Order No 3418 directs Department of the Interior (DOI) staff:

to review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn public lands, consistent with existing law, including 54 U.S.C. 320301 and 43 U.S.C. 1714.

To the general public, those numbers do not mean anything, but it turns out that 54 U.S.C. 320301 is the law that gives U.S. presidents the power to designate national monuments.

Project 2025 calls for the gutting of environmental regulations. The quietly planned rollback of national monument protections in 2025 is a direct application of that goal—removing conservation designations that limit energy extraction, mining, grazing, and development (43 U.S.C. 1714 is the law that gives U.S. presidents the power to ban new mining and drilling). Project 2025 treats ideas of Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, biodiversity, and climate change resilience as obstacles. Many recent national monument proclamations from President Obama and President Biden were based on those ideas. Project 2025 envisions a future where government agencies become vehicles for private-sector profit, especially in energy and land use. Reducing monument protections removes barriers for oil, gas, and mining interests—many of whom are donors or allies to Project 2025 architects. It’s about freeing up public lands for private industry, a central tenet of the Project 2025 agenda.

In 2017, the list of national monuments targeted was well publicized and became the blueprint for Our National Monuments. So what are the monuments targeted this time? President Biden’s final proclamations were Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments in California. Located between Joshua Tree National Park and the Salton Sea, Chuckwalla National Monument safeguards 627,000 acres of California’s Colorado Desert, completing the largest continuous spread of protected lands in the lower 48 states, now known as the Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor. The monument is almost as large as Joshua Tree National Park, but as is often the case with BLM lands, to explore it fully requires a 4WD vehicle. One of its most accessible areas is the Corn Springs area, whose photos illustrate this section. Even though, after driving a rough road, the skid plate of the Prius got loose and we needed to go back to town to find a car lift to fix it. I thought it was a smart move to establish those new parklands in a state where they enjoy wide popular and political support – as opposed to Utah where they enjoy only popular support. However, I didn’t take into account the current president’s obsession with undoing his predecessor’s legacy – even when it makes no sense whatsoever. In Mid-March, it appeared that he was poised to rescind protections for the two new California national monuments, but like the rest of the process, there was much uncertainty, backtracking, and little transparency. Earlier this week, Public Domain got the scoop that the leaked DOI 2026-2030 Strategic Plan Draft Framework includes “assess and right-size monuments” and “return heritage lands and sites to the states”, but was short on specifics. Another scoop from the Washington Post includes this:

Interior Department aides are looking at whether to scale back at least six national monuments, these individuals said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no final decisions had been made. The list, they added, includes Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

All of this is done in the name of energy emergency, that justifies insanely compressing the once multi-year EIS environmental review process to 28 days. However, the U.S. as the largest petroleum producer in the world and a net exporter, is pumping more crude than at any time in history. Natural gas, coal, and lithium supply far outpace demand. The real agenda isn’t about meeting urgent energy needs—it’s about seizing a political opportunity to gut environmental safeguards and privatize public resources under the guise of crisis. National monuments, many of which were designated to protect culturally and ecologically sensitive lands, are being rebranded as “obstacles” to growth. What’s being framed as necessity is, in fact, ideology: a drive to dismantle public land protections for the benefit of extractive industries and political donors.

The public may not even know it’s happening until it’s too late. This calculated opacity is a feature, not a bug: it prevents organized resistance, media coverage, or meaningful public debate. As someone who spent years photographing the national monuments, I can say with confidence: these lands are not “wasted” because they aren’t being mined or drilled. They are vital places of beauty, heritage, refuge, and scientific value. They were designated after rigorous review and with overwhelming public support. Rolling back their protections without any meaningful engagement, is a direct attack on the principle that public lands belong to the people. The tragedy here is not just the potential loss of protections. It’s the erosion of public trust in how our shared heritage is governed. When democratic processes are subverted, and transparency is replaced by executive fiat, we don’t just lose landscapes—we lose the idea that those landscapes belong to all of us.

What We Can Do

We need to be clear-eyed: this is not just about politics or partisanship. It’s about defending the future of public lands. The attacks on the National Park Service and national monuments are calculated, systemic, and designed to fly under the radar. But if they succeed, the consequences will be irreversible. Last week, Interior Secretary Burgum gave DOGE operative Tyler Hassen, a former oil executive, full control of the department’s organization and staffing, which could be interpreted as effectively putting Elon Musk’s DOGE in charge of America’s public lands. What could go wrong?

April 19, 2025. St James Park, San Jose, California.

Participate in protests. Momentum has been gathered by 50501, a grassroots movement which has mobilized millions without any budget, centralized structure, or official backing. Support citizen groups who track these developments, in particular Resistance Rangers (NPS inside voice, whistleblower culture) and the Conservation Lands Foundation (grassroots coalition builder, defender of BLM lands). Legal action will be an effective way to block policies, a focus of Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Biological Diversity. Contact elected officials, using the digital tools of big legacy organizations such as NPCA Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, or directly via 5 Calls. Share what’s happening with those who care about nature, democracy, and equity—even if they don’t usually follow public lands policy, just like I did with you. Above all, refuse to normalize the dismantling of a century-old conservation legacy. Public lands were created because people fought for them. That fight isn’t over. It is escalating into a new, more dangerous phase. Let’s not look back on this moment with regret. Let’s meet it with resolve.