The interior of Jenny Slot Canyon through a fisheye lens, featuring a two-layered erosion pattern known as “tafoni.” The result here is a comic-threatening voracious look in the rock. Taken in Snow Canyon State Park, in SW Utah.
Tafoni is created by the chemical action of salt water on sandstone or granite over many millions of years. The salt water weakens the chemical bonds of the rock intermittently, and the weaker parts are washed away, leaving the tafoni pattern. When encountered in desert areas, as they are here, the tafoni indicate the past presence of shallow seas. Here the fisheye exaggerates the gape of the face-in-the-rock, creating a comical fright-grimace out of the double-layered tafoni.
About Joel Simpson:
A NJ native, with a PhD from Brown in comparative literature, Simpson went pro as a photographer in 2002, after teaching college English, French, and Italian, and playing jazz piano professionally in New Orleans. Since then, his work has shown extensively in solo and group shows in the US and Europe, been published many times, and has won awards, and is part of the permanent collections at the Paris Musée de l’érotisme and the Williamsburg (Brooklyn) Art and Historical Center. His book of geological photography, EARTHFORMS: Intimate Portraits of Our Planet, won a GOLD Nautilus Book Award for 2019. earthforms.net.
