About this site's background image

Pictographs were usually painted on light colored rock surfaces with pigments made from mineral deposits. I shot this photograph in Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, where it is part of a pictograph panel perhaps 150 feet long with many images. its exceptional quality is of a style called "Barrier Creek", and is estimated to be 8,700 years old. The meaning of these images and the artists who painted them is a mystery. They predate the Fremont people who later inhabited the area of eastern Utah.