Although my sister Libba had no need to photograph The Grand Canyon for her documentary, and I had no reason to go there for my own research, I felt it imperative that she see the place, especially since we were so near to it.

So we drove north again from Flagstaff and checked it out.  Looking into the canyon is like looking up at the night stars — awesome but impossible to process rationally.  In Kant’s formulation, it is sublime, beyond comprehension, rather than beautiful, a phenomenon with a quality of aesthetic unity.

The sublime is always somewhat forbidding, somewhat terrifying.  It reminds us that the mind of God passeth all human understanding.

[Photographs © 2014 Libba Marrian]

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