“You can’t do this kind of photography without having the place change you,” he says. Spending time alone in wild country, he developed a deep appreciation for solitude and the importance of wilderness as a transformative refuge. If you’re not, you’re dead.”Ĭurious about his backyard in the American Southwest, he made spectacular images of red rock canyons, desert plants and rivers. “You also have to tell a story, truthfully. This requires discipline-I call it ‘dancing on demand,’” he says. “In my years of feeding the presses, I had to produce every day. But the same skills that served him well in the news business transferred to his new passion of photographing nature. Photographing scenery was a departure for this seasoned photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner for his images of deplorable conditions in Illinois mental institutions. He moved to Arizona, continued to work for a newspaper, and started exploring and shooting the landscapes of his new desert home. Emerging through the icy blue cloud line into golden light on top of the world, his life was forever changed. “Pretty scary for a flatlander doughboy from the Midwest.”Īnd yet while facing danger, he also saw incredible beauty. “It was a death march all the way off the mountain,” says Dykinga. His group reached the summit and then lost track of their route on the descent in stormy whiteout conditions. He soon found himself bracing against 60-mph winds on avalanche-prone Cadaver Gap.

The man turned back after the first day, but Dykinga trudged on. After completing a short mountaineering course, Dykinga and his subject began the two-day, grueling climb to the summit. Working as a photojournalist for the Chicago Tribune, Dykinga was assigned to photograph a Chicago man attempting to climb the fifth-highest peak in the continental United States. In 1975, Jack Dykinga bought a pair of hiking boots, jogged around the block, and thought he was ready to climb 14,410-foot Mount Rainier in Washington State. This image is the cover photo of “Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau,” a book by Jack Dykinga featuring landscapes that became part of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in northern Arizona.

Petrified sand dunes in Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness.

Jack Dykinga's Arizona by Jack Dykinga