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Fires at Green March Ruin, Sheik Canyon, San Juan County, Utah (from the series Marks in Place)
Fires at Green March Ruin, Sheik Canyon, San Juan County, Utah (from the series Marks in Place)
Fires at Green March Ruin, Sheik Canyon, San Juan County, Utah (from the series Marks in Place)

Fires at Green March Ruin, Sheik Canyon, San Juan County, Utah (from the series Marks in Place)

Artist (American, born 1949)
Date1982
MediumChromogenic print
DimensionsImage: 14 × 17 1/2 in. (35.6 × 44.5 cm)
Support: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineSouthwest '85 Purchase Prize, 1986
Object number2012.12
DescriptionGlow of two fires on rocky ground in front of rock wall with pictographs of human-like figures.
Text Entries

Jurors for the competition were Linda Cathcart, the director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and the artist Ed Ruscha. It is not clear if they selected the awards from the show. Fitch’s photograph was selected for a purchase award and was retained by the museum for acquisition.

 

The image was published in the book Marks in Place (UNM Press, 1988, plate 57, page 81), which features images of prehistoric rock art by five contemporary photographers. In the book, the published title is Fires beneath a possible breech birth depiction at Sheik Canyon, Utah, October 11, 1982.

 

According to the artist, the photograph was made as part of a survey project funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and titled Marks and Measures.

 

The negative was made with an 8 x 10 view camera.
Rather than giving a close-up view of the rock-art figures on this canyon wall, the artist offers a broader context to convey the experience of coming to them from within the landscape. Emphasizing that these works are ancient but also of the present, he includes the small fires from his own visit to the site, situating the picture in a specific moment. For him, the fires also represent “the act of placing my hand, as in sympathetic magic, onto sacred places, not to hold or possess but to connect.”
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