Bisti [SOLD]

From the Back Cover:  The Bisti Badlands in northwestern New Mexico stand out against the treeless plain of the San Juan Basin, their starkness heightened by an almost total lack of vegetation. The clay and rock soil has eroded into a variety of weird shapes that appear barren and uninviting to some observers. To others, the strange formations have a dramatic and mysterious beauty.

The area also contains some of the oldest plant and animal fossils in North America. There are coal deposits from about seventy million years ago and extensive evidence that documents the extinction of the dinosaur and the beginning of the age of mammals. The area is not only geologically significant. It was inhabited by the Anasazi Indians and today is home to the Navajo.

Strip mining begun in the 1970s threatened to destroy the area and prompted conservation groups to set aside a portion as wilderness. The rest continues to be mined for coal and other mineral deposits, destroying much of the fragile environment. With stark and powerful imagery, David Scheinbaum has recorded the strange beauty of the badlands. Many of his pictures are from outside the wilderness area and depict geologic formations that already have been decimated. His photographs, accompanied here by essays on the scientific, historical, and cultural significance of the area, pay tribute to a unique and fragile desert landscape. They may be ultimately the Bisti's last legacy.

David Scheinbaum is a well-known Santa Fe photographer. Spencer Lucas is a paleontologist and professor of geology at the University of New Mexico. Garrick Bailey is professor of anthropology at the University of Tulsa. Andrew Davis is the former co-editor of the Chaco-Bisti News. Beaumont Newhall is the foremost photo-historian in this country.