Mesa Verde Sun Temple

Author's Comments

The Sun Temple is not what most people come to Mesa Verde to photograph, and that is precisely why I find myself drawn to it. The cliff dwellings below get the attention and the lines and the postcard treatment. Sun Temple sits up on the mesa top, unfinished, deliberately strange in its D-shaped footprint, and almost no one stays long. The stonework is the photograph. Get close. The double walls are some of the finest masonry on the entire mesa, and in the raking light of late afternoon the courses come alive in a way that flat midday sun completely flattens. I look for the shadows that fall along the inside curve, where one stone meets another and the joinery becomes visible. These are detail shots, tight compositions, the kind of frame that asks the viewer to slow down. But do not leave without working the wider frame too. The site sits on a point between Cliff Canyon and Fewkes Canyon, and from the right angle you can hold both the temple walls and the canyon depth in the same composition. That is harder than it sounds. The contrast between the geometric precision of the masonry and the organic fall of the canyon is the picture I keep trying to make and have not quite made yet. September is my month here. The summer crowds are gone, the light has lengthened, and the afternoon shadows do the work that the stonework deserves. Combine it with the Cliff Palace overlook a short drive away and you have an afternoon that holds together as a single sustained piece of seeing, rather than a checklist.

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