Erosion-esque

Karl A. Baumgaertel

Bryce Canyon National Park is a sprawling reserve in southern Utah, known for crimson-colored hoodoos—spire-shaped rock formations. The Bruce Canyon Amphitheater is home to the greatest concentration of hoodoos on Earth. It is difficult to grasped that Lake Claron existed in this area 50 million years ago and that the rocks of Bryce Canyon formed near sea level. Over the millenniums plate tectonic shifts elevated the rock formations and Bryce Canyon sits at a maximum elevation of 9,115 feet—the perfect elevation for the forces of nature to sculpt the stone hoodoos. President Warren Harding proclaimed Bryce Canyon a national monument on 8 June 1923. The following year Congress passed a bill to established Utah National Park. The land was acquired and the name was changed back to Bryce Canyon and, on 25 February 1928, Bryce Canyon became an official National Park. In 1931, the size of the park was increased to the current 35,835 acres by President Hoover.

Erosion-esque is a vintage chlorobromide photograph taken by Karl A. Baumgaertel in about 1930. He was a member of the Pictorial Photographers of America and exhibited in the Pittsburgh Salon of Photographic Art, the Chicago Camera Club Century of Progress Photographic Art, and the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. According to the National Portrait Gallery, a chlorobromide print is a black and white print with a warm, brownish black tone, made from paper coated with a mixture of silver chloride and silver bromides. With his photograph, Baumgaertel captured one of the most photographed hoodoos in Bryce Canyon National Park.