WHEN MONUMENT VALLEY RISES INTO sight from the desert floor, you realise you’ve always known it. Its brick-red spindles, sheer-walled mesas and grand buttes - the stars of countless films, TV commercials and magazine ads - are part of the modern consciousness. And Monument Valley’s epic beauty is only heightened by the barren landscape surrounding it: one minute you’re in the middle of sand, rocks and infinite sky, then suddenly you’re transported to a fantasyland of crimson sandstone towers, thrusting up to 36O metres skyward.
Most of the formations were named for what they (sort of) look like: the Mittens, Eagle Rock, Bear and Rabbit, and Elephant Butte. Scattered along the border between Arizona and Utah, they are tinged red with iron oxide and were formed through a complex combination of volcanic activity, sedimentary deposition in prehistoric oceans, geologic uplift, then erosion over the past 50 million years by both wind and water.
PHOTOGRAPH: MARK READ