Grand Canyon

Karl A. Baumgaertel

The Grand Canyon, a mile-deep gorge in northern Arizona, began taking shape approximately six million years ago as the Colorado River began to carve a deep channel through layers of rock. The canyon is over 270 miles long and up to 18 miles wide. The human history of the canyon stretches back 12,000 years and Native Americans have inhabited the Grand Canyon and the surrounding area for at least 4,000 years. Ancestral Pueblo people following by Paiute, Navajo, Zuni and Hopi tribes once inhabited the Grand Canyon. Today the Havasupai people claim the Grand Canyon as their ancestral home and, in 1975, the Havasupai people regained a large portion of their land from the federal government. President Benjamin Harrison protected the Grand Canyon in 1893 as a forest reserve, and in 1919 Woodrow Wilson signed the Grand Canyon National Park Act.

Grand Canyon is a vintage chlorobromide photograph taken by Karl A. Baumgaertel in 1931. He was a member of the Pictorial Photographers of America and exhibited in the Pittsburgh Salon of Photographic Art, the Chicago Camera Club Century of Progress Photographic Art, and the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. According to the National Portrait Gallery, a chlorobromide print is a black and white print with a warm, brownish black tone, made from paper coated with a mixture of silver chloride and silver bromides. Baumgaertel’s sweeping photograph hints at the infiniteness of the Grand Canyon. Distant canyon walls serve as a backdrop to the distinctive Zoroaster Temple in the upper right corner. A series of diagonals, beginning with the trees clinging to the canyon, lead the viewer’s eyes to the temple.