The minimalist artist Robert Smithson was inspired to create his earthwork sculptures by watching dump trucks on the industrial wastelands of his native New Jersey. He discerned form even within the detritus of a debased landscape, and he wrote many essays on the esthetics of his work. Jack Robinson photographed the thirty-one year old Smithson in New York on November 7, 1969 as part of a Vogue feature. Smithson is described as being “at the center of artists who are taking art out of galleries and museums.” He had just covered a Vancouver island with broken glass and in 1970 he would create his most definitive work, “Spiral Jetty”, a 1,500 foot coil of rocks and earth jutting out into the Great Salt Lake. He died in a plane crash in Texas in 1973, while surveying sites for a new earthwork.