Many notables have photographed this wall of stains above White House Ruin. None that I know made images from this head-on wide-angle perspective portraying so much of the canyon wall. I am quoting from the work of two men, one at work in the 19th Century (Timothy O’Sullivan) and the other from the 20th (Ansel Adams.) I made this picture in the 21st Century from a distance made obligatory by a heavy chain-link fence restricting access. This barrier certainly did not exist when the aforementioned large-format photographers were practicing; they both worked at close range, making a fragment of the cliff dwelling large in the foreground. The black stains formed a slightly receding background. For me the dark streaks intersected by natural carvings — so complex and finely detailed — produce most of the drama and fascination here; the ruins themselves become a decorative adjunct of diminished significance, a human embellishment dwarfed by elemental forces. The archaeological site lies slightly above a riverbed, just below a sheer cliff which rises several hundred feet, itself located in a maze of canyons connected to the motif below.