JOEL SIMPSON’S PHOTOS: ROCK-SOLID WONDERS

Joel Simpson is a New Jersey-based photographer who has traveled around the United States and overseas in search of the most unusual-looking, natural-rock and other geological formations. Now, his images of these remarkable expressions of nature’s powers have been assembled in a new, third edition of a Simpson photo collection.

IMAGES OF UNUSUAL NATURAL STRUCTURES EVOKE SURREALIST SENSIBILITIES AND TEASE THE EYE

by Edward M. Gómez

Who needs the wildest imaginings of science fiction when Mother Nature — not to mention her sidekick and derivative, human nature — serve up so much that seems bizarre or unbelievable so plentifully, everywhere, so much of the time?

Joel Simpson, a New Jersey-based photographer and keen observer of nature’s more unusual expressions, is just about to issue the third edition of Playgrounds for the Mind: The Surreal in the Real (JSS Books), a collection in book form of his remarkable, can-you-believe-that images, whose impact is as strong as their subject matter is unique.

Joel Simpson, "Rockpile, Île deOuessant, Brittany, France," 2019, digital photograph, dimensions variable. Reproduced by permission of the photographer.

Together they offer a testament to the enthusiasm — and respect — Simpson obviously has for the oddly shaped, richly textured, natural rock formations and other geological or weather-related phenomena whose looks and alluring auras he has captured with his camera.