MICHAEL A. SMITH. Mummy Ruins, Canyon Del Muerto, Arizona, 1975. 7.625x9.5" gelatin silver print mounted on 13x15" mat board. Printed 1975. Signed in pencil on mount recto. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso: 7506-22 / 220 3/100 / Mummy Ruins / Canyon del Muerto / Arizona, 1975 /569.016.310.

Born in Philadelphia in 1942, Michael A. Smith has been working in photography since 1966. Less than a year later, in 1967, he began photographing exclusively with an 8x10" view camera, committing himself to the contact print. Later he added both an 8x20" and an 18x22" view camera.

His photographs are included in the permanent collections of over 100 museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

His commitment to the medium has resulted in over 200 exhibitions. In addition, he has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he has been the recipient of major commissions to photograph four American cities. In 1981, Smith's first book, the two-volume monograph, "Landscapes 1975-1979," was awarded Le Grand Prix du Livre at the Rencontres Internationale de la Photographie in Arles, France. At that time, the Swiss publication "Print Letter" commented that "for the first time in the 11 years of the Rencontres, a deserving book has won the book prize."

In 1992, Smith was honored with a 25-year retrospective exhibition at the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House in Rochester, NY. To mark the occasion, "Michael A Smith: A Visual Journey - Photographs from Twenty-Five Years" was published.

Canyon de Chelly National Monument was established on April 1, 1931, as a unit of the National Park Service. Located in northeastern Arizona, it is within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation and lies in the Four Corners region. Reflecting one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes of North America, it preserves ruins of the indigenous tribes that lived in the area, from the Ancestral Puebloans (formerly known as Anasazi) to the Navajo. The monument covers 83,840 acres (131 sq mi; 339 square km) and encompasses the floors and rims of the three major canyons: de Chelly, del Muerto, and Monument. These canyons were cut by streams with headwaters in the Chuska Mountains just to the east of the monument. None of the land is federally owned. Canyon de Chelly is one of the most visited national monuments in the United States.

Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canyon_de_Chelly_National_Monument

One of the largest and most beautiful ruins within Canyon del Muerto is Mummy Cave or Tse yaa Kini, Navajo for "house under the rock." Archeologists uncovered evidence of continuous habitation at this site from the time of earliest known occupation of the canyon to the latest dates of permanent residence by ancient Pueblo people (approximately CE 300-1300). This dwelling is built in two adjacent caves several hundred feet above the streambed. The largest portion of the settlement is in the eastern alcove and includes four kivas and more than fifty rooms. The western cave contains about twenty rooms. As houses on the lower levels became buried under debris, others were built on top of them, and the locations were reoccupied.

Constructed after the alcove structures, the central portion includes seven rooms and a three-story tower. Tree-ring dating techniques indicate the tower unit was built about CE 1286. This central unit has been identified as Mesa Verde-type masonry and is thought to have been built by people migrating from the Mesa Verde area late in the Pueblo occupation. It is not known whether the tower structure was used primarily as a defensive outpost or had special ceremonial significance. Throughout this ruin, much of the original plaster used on the walls remains. Mummy Cave received its name when an archeological expedition into the canyon in the late 1880s found two mummies in cists eroding out of the talus slope below the site. The leader of the expedition, Colonel James Stevenson, gave Canyon del Muerto its name following his work at Mummy Cave.

Credit: http://www.aztecnm.com/fourcorners/arizona/canyondechelly/northrim.html

Excellent. Minor wear.