More than Landscapes…

Why “geological” photography? Aren’t the photos of rocks in geology books mostly pretty boring?

I’m glad you asked! This is not a geology text. I intended it as an art book primarily to give pleasure, to surprise you and delight you, and secondarily to show you the crust of the Earth up close, while supporting the valiant Water Protectors of Standing Rock, who represent all of us who are deeply concerned to protect our dangerously stressed-out planet.

The geological focus of EARTHFORMS means that it includes and then looks beyond standard images of breathtaking landscapes, like inspiring mountain views, reflecting lakes, waterfalls, seascapes, canyons and forests. Its geological photography also includes caves with rare needle-like “frostwork”; tufa towers at dawn, noon, and after sundown; sensuous closeups of columnar basalt , fields of littoral granite, misty travertine limestone, bizarre bubbling mudpots caught at 1/3000th second, slot canyons at night, and stately, towering volcanic plugs. If you immerse yourself in these images, you risk becoming more attuned to form in the world around you, things you might have once passed over, like the “faces” in rock walls, the “angry” dried mud of desert playas, the “nipples” and “open wounds” of lava, the “smiles” of cross-bedded sandstone, and the stone latticework of seaside tafoni—that you can also find in deserts once covered by seas.

I have high standards of beauty, but not necessarily of the “pretty” kind. Rather I look for the kind that Surrealism’s founder André Breton called “convulsive,” that is, beauty that can change the way you see things and maybe change your life.

So come, have a look at the samples…

—Joel Simpson