Spiral Jetty

Spiral Jetty, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah

Built by Robert Smithson in 1970, the Spiral Jetty has spent the bulk of its career underwater due to the Great Salt Lake's steadily rising water levels. When it emerges from the water for a few months each year, it is encrusted with sparkling salt crystals whose whiteness is in strange contrast to the pink algae-tinted water in which it lies.

In his 1971 essay "The Spiral Jetty," Smithson wrote of the profound physical effect the site had on him, echoes of which are discernible to visitors even now:

"Chemically speaking, our blood is analogous in composition to the primordial seas. Following the spiral steps we return to our origins, back to some pulpy protoplasm, a floating eye adrift in an antediluvian ocean. On the slopes of Rozel Point I closed my eyes, and the sun burned crimson through the lids. I opened them and the Great Salt Lake was bleeding scarlet streaks. My sight was saturated by the color of red algae circulating in the heart of the lake, pumping into ruby currents – no, they were veins and arteries sucking up the obscure sediments. My eyes became combustion chambers, churning orbs of blood blazing by the light of the sun... Perception was heaving, the stomach turning, I was in a geologic fault that groaned within me. Between heat lightning and heat exhaustion, the spiral curled into vaporization. I had the red heaves, while the sun vomited its corpuscular radiations. Rays of glare hit my eyes with the frequency of a Geiger counter. Surely, the storm clouds massing would turn into a rain of blood."



Tools: Kodak Royal Gold 100, Canon AE-1, Rokinon 28-80 zoom