Tsegihi, Canyon de Chelley Pictographs

henley / graphics Photography

Tsegihi (White House) Pictographs, Canyon de Chelley 1983

In Tsegihi,
In the house made of dawn,
In the house made of evening light,
In the house made of dark cloud,
In the house made of he-rain,
In the house made of dark mist,
In the house made of she-rain,
In the house made of pollen,
In the house made of grasshoppers,
Where the dark mists curtain the doorway
The path to which is on the rainbow,
Where the zig-zag lightning stands high on top,
Where the he-rain stands high on top, ....

- The Night Chant

This image is not an immediate, obvious framing as you stand below the ancient cliff dwelling. But it was mine then.

In the summer of 1983 I found myself touring the Southwest looking for a new place to live, and headed out to Canyon de Chelley for the 4th of July. This is my first photograph of rock art and was quite a surprise to me at the time.

When I hiked down into the Canyon to the White House ruins, I had left my tripod in the car as the sun was so bright. That was actually a mistake. I took this handheld photograph in the shade at f4 & 1/15 sec exposure on slow film. (There was a small grove of trees there providing shade.) Despite that impediment, it's one of my sharper 35mm black & white film photographs, primarily due to the interplay with the quality of light.

What initially appeared to be just a simple arrangement of four painted pictographs, is actually a coded response with the rock surface itself. With close observation and some reading, you might make some of those connections out too.

The Navajo Night Chant is said to be first performed at Tsegihi (White House).