Photographer Harry Halpern spoke about his exhibit of photographs of Anasazi art and artifacts, now on display at the Peterborough Town Library, at a reception on Friday, Jan. 9, in the gallery.
Halpern, a New England native and a carpenter by trade, became fascinated with Anasazi culture during a road trip to Utah in 1978.
“Like every hippie, I went out west on a road trip when I graduated from college,” Halpern said. “I didn’t know the Arches and Canyonlands national parks even existed, and I just fell in love with the area.”
Halpern spends a month to six weeks in the region of southwest Utah near Bear’s Ears National Monument every year.
“I’m about to head back there in February. It’s what I do,” he said. ” I specialize in going to really remote places where most other people don’t go, and I’ve been fortunate enough to connect with other people who enjoy real backcountry hiking.”
One of Halpern’s images captures an Anasazi-made ladle, which he discovered while on a 30-day backcountry hiking trip.
“On that trip, we never saw another person, and we were never on a trail,” Halpern said. “It’s hard to say exactly, but that ladle is probably around 1,000 years old, and it was just lying in the ground in pieces. We sort of pieced it together.”
The Anasazi people abandoned the southwestern U.S. around the year 1,200, leaving petroglyphs, or images carved or scratched into rock; pictographs, images painted onto rocks using mineral paint; remnants of residential structures, arrowheads, lithic flakes, which indicate the creation of stone tools; and pottery.
Halpern’s photographs include his own discoveries, such as the ladle and pottery, as well as some better-known pictographs depicting people and animals. One well-known pictograph clearly depicts a group of people and animals arranged in a circle.
“Were they counting people? Were they portraying a group or a family? Nobody knows for sure what they mean. It would be a lie for me or anyone to say they know what the pictures were for,” Halpern said.
Halpern now designs trips for travelers who want to explore the former Anasazi lands of the Southwest.
“This is real back country. It’s places you can’t get to by car; you really have to be prepared,” he said.
Halpern will work with prospective travelers as long as they become members of the Southwest Utah Wilderness Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the Anasazi lands, which are concentrated around Bear’s Ears National Monument. The monument is now at risk after the Trump Administration reduced the size of the park by 85%.
For information about the Southwest Utah Wilderness Alliance, visit suwa.org.
