KURT MARKUS – MONUMENT VALLEY 2002-2017
2018-09-17Monument Valley is located at the four corners region spanning Utah and Arizona on the Navajo Nation Reservation. Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii, the Navajo name for Monument Valley meaning ‘clearing among the rock’, spans five square miles with fragile pinnacles of rock of sandstone that tower up to 1,000 feet. For hundreds of years, the Navajo have raised livestock and farmed small quantities of crops in the valley. Not just a place of habitation and livelihood, Monument Valley has significant meaning to the many Navajo who took refuge in the valley when forced out of Canyon De Chelly by the U.S. Army during the “Long Walk.” An 1868 treaty allowed their return to their ancestral homeland and established the Navajo Reservation. Other parts of Monument Valley have been added to the Navajo Reservation over time. Today, an estimated 100 Navajo people live in the valley. Monument Valley became popular with Hollywood when John Ford’s first of many movies, Stagecoach, was shot there in 1938, starring John Wayne, and making him a star, as well as putting Westerns in a respected film genre.
Kurt Markus made his first trip to Monument Valley in 2002, thanks to an assignment from Conde Nast Traveler, British edition. Kurt confessed he had no idea what he was in for on that first visit, thinking it a tourist’s destination and a backdrop for director John Ford’s well-know Westerns. For Markus, the John Ford film, The Searchers, “touched a rawness that, if you know a bit of the West you could watch John Wayne rage across the landscape and not be embarrassed by bad costumes and corny dialogue. Ford finally made the film only he could have made.”
Opposite – Monument Valley, 2011
Exhibition runs through to October 20th, 2018
Obscura Gallery
1405 Paseo de Peralta
Santa Fe
87505 NM
