Arizona desert photography has made the state famous.
Despite the fact that Arizona is full of lush, green forests; even with the snow-covered mountains and ski resorts in and about Flagstaff; and irregardless of the metropolis that Phoenix has grown into over the past few years; with all that has happened in Arizona, desert photography is still the first thing people around the world envision when they think of the state.
Early Arizona desert photography was the product of expeditions into the untamed frontier land.
The 1872 Thompson Expedition, or the 1869 to 1872 Powell expeditions yielded a great deal of Arizona desert photography.
Of course, this subject matter of Arizona desert photography was old hat to the natives of the area - even if the medium used was not.
To the rest of the world, however, which had only heard of the "Wild West" and the Arizona desert, photography of the desolate places - which had seldom been seen by human eyes - captivated their attention.
The 1940s saw a renewed interest in pictures of Arizona, in particular desert photography, and the Southwest in general.
Fifteen years earlier, Arizona Highways was first published as an engineering journal.
In that early format, it was strictly concerned with the state's road quality.
It also had photographs of the surrounding scenery, however, and these became more prominently placed as years went by.
Eventually, the magazine would emerge in its current format - full of stories about the state's ecology, the history, jokes, travel information, and color photography.
Again the world took in the unparalleled beauty of Arizona: The monsoon storms; the purple skies of sunset in Spring; Lake Powell, named for the explorer who'd first showed it to the world in his Arizona desert photography some 70 years earlier.
The beauty of the Arizona desert hasn't diminished in all of these years.
Arizona Highways Magazine still leads with color photography of the inhospitable but breathtakingly beautiful vistas of Arizona.