Monument Valley, Utah, 2019
Archival pigment print
44 x 58 and 59 x 79 inches
November 12, 2022
Italian photographer Luca Campigotto captures the serene beauty of Monument Valley at dawn, one of the most iconic vistas in the American West. The mythical buttes were carved out of the region’s sandstone plateaus over the course of 50 million years, making them older than the entire course of human history. Campigotto is a film enthusiast and was surely aware that Sergio Leone’s 1967 film Once Upon a Time in the West was shot in Monument Valley—the first Spaghetti Western to be filmed outside Europe. The rocky outcropping seen in the foreground is known as John Ford Point, as Ford favored the ledge's dramatic view as a camera location for his own films, including his 1956 classic The Searchers. The region is synonymous with the American West although it has historically been part of Navajo territory and wasn’t traveled by early settlers during the Westward expansion. The Valley is sacred Navajo land, and their name for the area, Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii, translates to "the sand that lights up the valley", a vision expressed by the warm glow of Campigotto's photograph.
