Ansel Adams in Our Time

Ansel Adams in Our Time runs through August 6, 2023 at the de Young Museum of San Francisco.

Adams' photography, as we all well know, was masterful. We all aspire to show light and dimension half as well as he did. The influence of his work protected much of the Sierra from becoming as overdeveloped as Lake Tahoe. He reigns supreme among landscape photographers. 

The exhibit takes us through the stages of Adams'  photographic career, from taking pictures mostly from near his family home in what is now the Seacliff, San Francisco, through some more urban photography, out to the Colorado Plateau with George O'Keefe to photograph Din<&eacute> dances, up into the Sierra, to the internment camps at Manzanar, to Hawai'i (where he complained of the humidity), and out to Timbisha/Death Valley. The exhibit shows a short film of Adams and some other photographers, with their heavy photographic equipment, in clothing that today would be considered entirely inadequate, climbing up the south wall of Yosemite Valley, grasping snow in their bare hands, to photograph the surface of Half Dome.

The exhibit includes the work of some photographers who influenced Adams, such as Carleton Watkins, and also the work of some more contemporary photographers who (like all of us) were influenced by him. As we've all been inundated with Adams' work for our entire lives, I will write here about the work of these less familiar others. Being included in  an Ansel Adams exhibit raises the expectation in the viewer that the work will be of similar quality to that of Adams, and it was eminently clear here that no one else could live up to the standard set by the master.

My favorites of the works by Adams-influenced artists were those who photographed some of his less well-known subjects:

Bryan Schutmaat (American, b. 1983)

Bryan Schutmaat masterfully captured the devastation of boom and bust mountain towns. I absolutely loved the symbolism with the cemetery in front of the beautifully-lit background here:

Will Wilson (Diné [Navajo], b. 1969)

I was surprised to learn that Adams' work included some portraits, and that those were as marvelous as his landscape work. The exhibit featured several photographs of the Diné dances by Adams. It also featured this fabulous self-portrait of Will Wilson, demonstrating the contradictions of the modern life of the Diné and other Indians. I was delighted by this art.

Meghann Riephenhoff (American, b. 1979)
Riepenhoff created this amazing triptych of cyanotypes by placing photo-sensitive paper into the surf of the Puget Sound. The wall description of her work in the exhibit compared it to Adams' Surf Sequences. I did not think Riepenhoff's work much resembled Surf Sequences, but I did find it brilliant and inspirational in its own right. I want to run out to the beach with some paper and chemicals!

It is an immense challenge in landscape photography to take an iconic scene, what we call a "mature subject," of which everyone has seen hundreds of photos, and make it your own. Several of the photographers in the exhibit used unusual techniques to capture Adams' very familiar subjects in unique ways, to varying degrees of success:

Binh Dahn (American, b. Vietnam, 1977)

Although he is younger than I am, Binh Danh used daguerrotypes to capture the same iconic Yosemite scenes as Adams did. He achieved the incredible clarity for which daguerrotypes are known, with some unusual effects such as the waterfalls appearing pale blue.

Abelardo Morrell (American, b. Cuba, 1948)

Abelardo Morrell also shoots iconic scenes, such as Old Faithful and here, Mt. Moran from the Grand Tetons, but he does it by using a device similar to a camera obscura called a tent camera. He uses a periscope to project a scene onto the ground under a tent, and then uses a tethered laptop to photograph the projection with a digital camera. The results often have an Impressionist look. I found that often the surface of the ground would be in sharp focus, while the projected scene was somewhat out of focus, and I wondered how the images would look if he had focused instead on the scene and left the ground blurry.

Arno Rafael Minkkinen (American, b. Finland, 1945)

Arno Rafael Minkkinen includes abstract nudes of himself in his landscape photography. He shapes his body to match the landscape in the background. I thought this was a fascinating idea, but I noticed that his depth of field had been too shallow to show both himself and, say, Tunnel View, in good focus. I was distracted by seeing Liberty Cap in poor focus.

David Benjamin Sherry (American, b. 1981)

I was not familiar with Sherry before this exhibit, but, in looking at his website, I can see  he has done some wonderful work. He incorporates his gay identity into his work in ways that were only made clear to me on reading his text about them. I could see that this technique was very effective in his 2019 series American Monuments, where he photographed sites that were threatened by the Trump Administration. I did not think it had quite the same effectiveness in the photos that were included in the exhibit, such as this one of Zabriskie Point. 

Matthew Brandt (American, b. 1982)

Matthew Brandt creates photo silkscreens using condiments. Here, ketchup and mustard create an effect on Half Dome that looks a little bit like color toning. Unfortunately, though, the condiments smear out some of the foreground, and some parts of Half Dome look blown out here.

Catherine Opie (American, b. 1961)

I was familiar with some of Opie's amazing portraits before I saw this exhibit. But I think maybe she should stick to portraits. This photo of, I guess, Tunnel View, makes kind of an interesting abstract with some nice tones and colors, but you keep waiting for it to resolve on the screen, don't you? Adams was obsessed with perfection in focus. 

I will finish with a couple of photos by Adams himself. I adored this self-portrait that he took in Monument Valley while waiting for the perfect light to photograph the scene.

I'm sure you can see why I just wanted to squee with delight at this 1938 photo of a subject so near and dear to myself and many of my friends. Just look at the beautiful detail on the IOOF building, all faded now! I guess it shouldn't be any particular surprise that Adams photographed Bodie, but I just loved seeing it!

All in all, it was a wonderful exhibit, although I felt that it was too crowded for a thing that required reservations. It is a great thing to live in a place where we have such cultural resources. True to the reputation of the city, though, when I returned to Mather, I found that the visitors from Texas who had parked two spaces in front of me were not having such a great day in Golden Gate Park.

Beth Zuckerman, self-portrait

I am a high-energy creature of passion, a photographer and an aerial dancer. I share with you my journey as an artist.

Visual Storytelling

What are we doing, with our photos and blogs, other than trying to tell our stories? We all have a human need to be heard. This fall term, I took a class in Visual Storytelling at Cabrillo College with Carmina Eliason.

The first assignment was to rest. That's right, get more sleep. We are more creative when we are better slept, and the first project was to create something from our dreams. I kept a dream journal, and made the self-portrait above based on my dream imagery.

As is my wont, I did not go for the easy A, but rather worked on pushing my own artistic and emotional boundaries. My last blog post was a project for this class, on confronting my fear of dead things. For the second project, rather than doing something ridiculously easy like making a documentary about the Strawberry Creek running through Berkeley, I made a short video about my migraine condition:

Migraine

The big lesson is that, while we all want to shoot that amazing photo, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, that tells an entire story in a single frame, most visual storytelling does not work that way. Usually, visual storytelling combines multiple photos, or is in video form, with explanatory text or voiceover. The honesty and genuineness of the voice, whether verbal or in text, are important elements.

While I had had extensive past experience editing my husband's video footage, I had had very little experience being behind rather than in front of the video camera. In the class, I challenged myself to do steady camera movement, pans, zooms, etc., and learned some editing techniques such as J- and L-cuts. One fun assignment was just to shoot a bunch of video clips of your life and splice them together. I made a short video about Fortitude's lung condition:

Fortitude

This was a very personal class, which asked us to delve deeply into our own selves and express what we found. It had much to teach about the profound vulnerability of artmaking. This has been a growth experience both emotionally and artistically.

Beth Zuckerman, self-portrait

I am a high-energy creature of passion, a photographer and an aerial dancer. I share with you my journey as an artist.

Confronting Phobia

CW: death, wild animal death, suicide

As I stumble my way through this strange, new, virus-ridden world, I continue to pursue growth in art, this time through a visual storytelling class. Artmaking can be a transformative process, and it can go deeply into the squishy parts of ourselves. The instructor asked us to examine our dreams, and, in particular, our childhood dreams. In examining my dreams, I found ongoing themes of death. As a child, I had recurring nightmares of being surrounded by dead fish. I developed a longtime phobia of dead things. By the time I was a teenager, I was unable to bring myself to look at anything dead, and I would run into the street to avoid dead birds on the sidewalk.

All of this was brought to the forefront of my mind on a recent road trip to Utah, where Mather had an unfortunate encounter with Bambi, leaving him drivable but wounded in the grill:

Eric and I were very sad about what we did to Bambi, and it cast a pall over an otherwise great vacation. Moreover, it reminded me of the times when I was a child, in Schenectady, NY, when our neighbor would shoot deer and drain them in his back yard. Little girl me was horrified by the sight of the dead deer so clearly visible from the yard where I loved to play. I would have to stay inside because it scared me so much.

The tree where our neighbor would hang his deer is the Y-shaped one in the upper part of this photo, and you can see how readily visible it was from our yard.

I particularly love this picture because it shows me learning to be both the photographer and the cyclist that I am today. It also shows what a hot car my Dad had... We sure loved that beautiful thing! When I was 3, he taught me to say "Dodge Dart GT V8 convertible." Photo by Rev. George Klohck, painstakingly and lovingly restored by your author

So, I made the daring decision to use my photography to confront and work through my fear of death and dead things. I was unable to take a picture of what was left of Bambi, and it was dark in any case, but I made myself photograph this roadside raccoon.

I found that not all dead things were disgusting and ugly, that sometimes a pretty thing can retain some of its beauty even in death.

When I told my instructor that I was having trouble finding subjects for my project, she suggested that try visiting the beach. That sounded like a pretty great idea conceptually, and it turned out to be rather a storytelling gold mine.

After work on a Friday, I secured my camera and tripod on my bike rack and rode Scheherazade out to what seemed like the nearest appropriate location, Albany Beach, on the San Francisco Bay. Almost immediately, I found the remnants of some dead thing, apparently avian.

A older white woman with a broad-brimmed and a very large Dalmatian walked up and asked, "What is that?"

"Part of a bird, I think," I told her.

"Yeah, looks like a chest," she agreed.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I explained that I was an art student and that I was looking for dead things to photograph for a class project. I have found that explaining that I am an art student will cause people just to nod their heads and accept whatever strange behavior I might be displaying, whether it be squatting with my tripod on the median in the middle of a busy boulevard, introducing myself to roboticists and asking for their photograph, or trotting around on the beach staring down at piles of washed-up kelp. At least here in Berkeley, everyone seems to take these behaviors pretty much for granted for an art student.

"There was a giant washup of dead fish here a month ago," she told me. "Hundred-year-old fish."

Her Dalmatian came running up to me barking and I scolded him. She quieted him while I explained to him that I didn't have any food (which was probably actually not true--I likely had a Clif bar or two in my hydropack).

"Why were there so many dead fish?" I asked. Her Dalmatian sniffed my hydropack.

"We've been dumping untreated sewage into the Bay," she explained, "and filling the water up with nitrogen. It's causing an algae bloom that's killed fish from Lake Merritt up to the San Pablo Bay."

"Wow," I said. A Labrador Retriever came bounding along and distracted the Dalmatian.

"Sturgeons," she said, "That's the kind of fish they were. Some of them were 100 years old."

While some of the details she gave were speculative, I was able to confirm the algae bloom and mass fish dieoff last month in an Oaklandside article.

So, it appeared that I had missed the best opportunity this year for photographing dead things on East Bay beaches. While the dogs chased each other, I walked up and down the beach, loaded down with camera and tripod, deliberately looking into clumps of organic material. It was a strange experience for me, because I ordinarily avert my eyes from these things. I don't like to look closely at anything that might be a dead thing, and am constantly looking away from rocks, pieces of wood, piles of garbage, bags, etc. There I was, staring right into piles of washed-up kelp, and not finding anything dead, just gull feathers.

I had combed almost the entire beach when I took a short side trip along the embankment, among the piles of rubble between the bike path and the Bay. There, at last, as the sun was setting behind Mt. Tamalpais, I found an appropriate subject.

Editing this photo was a disgusting chore.

As I was packing up Scheherazade, a man in a green hoodie was packing up his kiteboard. He was white, about 40, with a short red beard and sparking blue eyes.

"Get any good pictures?" he asked me.

"Well," I hesitated, "'good' is maybe not the right word. I'm an art student, and I've been trying to take pictures of dead things for a class project."

"Did you find any dead things?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah," I said.

"What?"

"Hmm... Cormorant, I think?"

"Did you get a picture of the cormorant in that beautiful moment when the sun poked through the clouds just before it set?"

"No! I tried, but I was just a little too slow," I sighed.

"That was a beautiful moment," he said, and I agreed it had been. We were silent for a moment, each remembering a magical experience we had enjoyed, but not together.

"Since you're fascinated by dead things," he told me, "I was out here kiteboarding with my buddy one time. He went in first, and he came back and he said, 'There's something out there, and I think it's a body. Call 911.'"

"A human body?" I asked.

"Yeah, it looked about human sized. I had been hoping it would turn out to be a seal, but it was a human."

"Yikes."

"Search-and-rescue came, but it was really search-and-recovery by that point. The really creepy thing about it was, you know, he had been floating in the water in that dead-man's float, face down, with his arms hanging down below him. So, when they turned him on his back and put him on the stretcher, rigor mortis had set in, and so his arms stayed sticking up in that same position."

"Like a zombie!" I exclaimed.

"Yeah." He shook his head, reliving the haunting memory.

"Suicide?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Because I was the one who reported it, I got a call later from the East Bay Regional Park District ranger, since it's their jurisdiction. He told me that they had found a suicide note and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels."

"He just drank himself into a stupor and went out into the Bay." He pointed out to the end of the Albany Bulb peninsula. "It was right out there by that tree."

I told him that this was a fantastic story and that I wanted to use it for my class project, along with a photo of the tree. I thanked him for the story and wished him a good weekend.

I hope all of this has been creepy in good way. It's been creepy for me! Thank you, my friends and fellow photographers, for bearing with me as I take on such a difficult subject. Since returning from Utah, I have had beautiful dreams of hiking through dramatic, wide-open landscapes.

Photo by Eric Zuckerman, processed by your author, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Beth Zuckerman, self-portrait

I am a high-energy creature of passion, a photographer and an aerial dancer. I share with you my journey as an artist.

Back to Mono Lake!

Black Point

Even with great wanderlust for new places, the eastern Sierra, with its sulfurous smells, surprise weather, and sublime light, keeps drawing us back.

The ongoing threat of COVID has challenged photography workshops as well as just about everything else in our lives. Gathering people together is fraught. While of course most of the time spent on nature photography is outdoors, part of the fun of workshops is precisely the gathering of people, with opportunities to share meals and photos. So, when Joe Decker led the first photography workshop hosted by the Mono Lake Committee since the last one (also led by him) in January of 2020, he worked with the Committee to find outdoor spaces for meals and photo sharing. The event was hugely successful and felt reasonably safe, and I was delighted to participate.

Old Marina

Joe leads at an aggressive pace, and there were eight field sessions in an approximately 48-hour workshop. He worked hard to take advantage of the best light under varying conditions. It's considerably easier to get enough sleep between sunset and sunrise shoots in January than it is in May. Friday, we had an afternoon shoot, a sunset shoot, and a night shoot, all before a sunrise shoot Saturday morning. There was a break for an afternoon nap on Saturday before the sunset shoot. I took a nap in my car Sunday before driving home after the sunrise and morning shoots!
Before the Saturday afternoon shoot, we had an outdoor photo sharing session in a Lee Vining solar pavilion. The light wasn't optimal for photo sharing, but it worked well enough, and it felt safer than indoors.

Enthusiastic and exuberant naturalist Nora Livingston of the Mono Lake Committee was a delightful addition to the workshop format. Sunday morning alone, she pointed out a Great Horned Owl, a Bald Eagle, and copulating Ospreys. I did not manage to capture those great moments photographically very well, but I did take an amusing photo of a Red-breasted Sapsucker that she identified on Saturday.

Lundy Canyon

A full-moon night session at South Tufa offered the opportunity to take photos where the light on the tufa looked like daylight, but the sky was full of stars. The experience was magical and the results were memorable.

South Tufa at night

But Joe managed to top that Saturday night with a sunset shoot at Black Point. With the exceptionally low lake level, we were able to take our tripods far out on the beach. The sky over the lake was incredible, and I took that amazing photo at the top of this post.

Mono Lake is a special place to so many of us. We hope that, very soon, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will be forced to reduce diversions from the Mono Lake even further than it already has. We hope that the beaches we were able to photograph at Black Point that fabulous night will soon be underwater as they were before the diversions began. Long live Mono Lake!

Black Point

Beth Zuckerman, self-portrait

I am a high-energy creature of passion, a photographer and an aerial dancer. I share with you my journey as an artist.

Education in Artmaking

Expressing my unusual mix of ethnicities

We could perceive artmaking as having two primary aspects, message and medium. We usually think of art classes as being focused on the latter, and on technique. The assumption seems to be that artists know what they want to say and just need to learn how to say it effectively. But this isn't necessarily the case. Artists usually also need help finding their voices and visions.

The class that I took in the winter, on color theory, was almost entirely technique. Technique is dry, and does not much nourish the artist's soul. For the spring term, I took a class that was refreshingly focused on artistic expression.

The course description for Lesley Louden's class on Photography, New Media and Social Change at Cabrillo College reads: "Examines the impact of new technologies and photography on culture, and analyzes the global social change achieved by current and historical movements in photography. Investigates how photography in new media influences current perceptions of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity and cultural identity."

I signed up for the class because I wanted to take History of Photography, but that class was being taught in person in faraway Aptos. I thought the assignments would be mostly writing, and the majority were. The class materials delved into many artistic movements in photography from the 19th c. to the present, in both traditional and new media, such as Dadaism and Situationist International. The class introduced me to many photographers, explaining why they created their art and what techniques they used to achieve the impacts that they had. We learned about Carrie Mae Weems' appropriation of photographs of slaves, and about Cindy Sherman's digitally-manipulated selfies. But, while I wrote extensively about art history and technique, this was an art class that required art projects, and I found great joy and creativity in creating them.

My own digitally-manipuated selfie.

However you may feel about ethnic, racial, and gender identity, these self-defining topics are great sources of artistic inspiration. To find your own personal artistic voice, you must explore and express who you are. The projects asked us to examine our ethnic and gender identity in the context of how people like us had been depicted in both traditional and new media, and to create art that presented ourselves on our own terms. 
I examined Albert Chong's Color Still Lifes, wherein he decorated photos of his ancestors with shamanic objects and fresh, brightly-colored flowers. I am lucky enough to have some photos of my great- and great-great-grandparents. I juxtaposed the photos with colorful teacups that my grandmother had collected and jewelry I had received from both sides of my family. The jewelry identifies both my family's culture and its religion. 

My great-grandfather engaging in highly questionable political activity

The limitations on travel that have been imposed by the pandemic have drastically altered my art. While I once thought of myself as a nature photographer, I now have become as much a self-portrait artist as anything else. The joke I make is that, "I used to want to be Ansel Adams, but the pandemic has forced me to try to be Robert Mapplethorpe instead." This new media class introduced me to many inspiring photographers, and helped me to forge an artistic path forward through the bleakness that continues to surround us.

Outside the Comfort Zone

Self-portrait in paint

After my fabulous experiences studying black-and-white photography with Neeley Drown at Cabrillo College last fall, for the winter term, I tried color theory under the instruction of Kimberly Cook at Foothill College. The medium for this class was not photography, but painting and collage.

At first, I was excited, ordering my paints, brushes, cutting mat, Xacto knife, T-square, etc. I carefully rearranged my drawers of art supplies to make room for the new treasures. I loved the idea of having my own sketchbook. 

As the class progressed, however, I found what a challenge it is for an artist to work outside of her customary medium.  Painting, and especially collage, are incredibly time-consuming. A child can take blue and yellow paint and mix them together to make green. But making the right green? A little more blue? A lot more yellow? Some white? A teeney, weeney, tiny bit of black? It is hard for a photographer not to get frustrated, considering how much faster and more precise it would be simply to type a few numbers in Photoshop. Apparently, classes such as these use paint because the barrier to entry is low. But if you know how to do the exercises in Photoshop, you might just want to gnaw your knuckles off trying to execute them using the messy contents of little tubes.

It emerged that my knowledge of color theory was fairly strong before the class. I already knew about the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the differences between RBY, RBG, and CMYK ways of describing color, and the meanings of hue, saturation, and luminance and the ways in which they are not entirely independent of each other. I possessed a fair understanding of the psychological impacts of different colors, perhaps because I am sensitive to them. If you'd asked me before the class to design a monochromatic or complementary color scheme, I could have created it, but I learned a little bit about triadic and analogous color schemes.

What I did develop in the class was a new appreciation for painting, and for the work my camera does. I learned how painters vary the luminances of their colors in order to show the direction of light in a painting and to create the illusion of depth in their work.

Most of the exercises in the class involved the following procedure:

• convert a photograph to black and white;

• posterize the photo in Photoshop to compress the various luminances into a handful;

• print the photo;

• trace lines surrounding the various luminances onto a piece of paper;

• number the places on the piece of paper where particular luminances were expressed in the photo; and, finally,

• paint in the numbered tracing with paints in particular color schemes to match the luminances that came from the photo with carefully appropriately mixed paint.

Half-finished painting

This technique produces fantastic results relatively easily. It also plainly demonstrates just how much of the work of producing the painting is done for you by the camera. The camera takes three dimensions and compresses them to two. It records exactly where, in a two-dimensional frame, different amounts of light are reflected into the sensor (and of course it can also record the saturation and hue of the light). I had not thought about it quite so plainly before, but this, essentially, is what cameras do.

From an artistic perspective, it is useful to understand how dimensions are compressed, to be able to flatten a scene in your mind. As I traced photographs, I developed a new understanding of the relationships between dimensions. I began to comprehend how a two-dimensional projection onto our retinas gets interpreted into three dimensions in our minds. I learned how our brains interpret the ways that light falls to see the depth in space before us, and how painters use that in their art.

As a result of working outside my customary medium, I learned how my camera helps me create my art. I now know just how useful the tool is, how much effort it saves me. I have more of an ability to see the world in two dimensions, to perceive how a scene around me will appear in the camera's frame. This understanding will help me use my equipment more effectively. These lessons were more valuable than what I did learn about color.

Posterized self-portrait

I earned an A in the class, but it was a tremendous effort for me to do so. I am now taking a class on how to use new media and photography for social change. Most of the assignments involve writing, which was my original medium before photography and dance. It was a useful experiment to work outside my comfort zone, but I am relieved to be back to playing in easy mode.

Beth Zuckerman, self-portrait

I am a high-energy creature of passion, a photographer and an aerial dancer. I share with you my journey as an artist.

A Beautiful Sierra Lake—Emptied

Mono Lake tufa, from South Tufa, in the pink light of dawn.

I have been enchanted by the magic of Mono Lake from the first time I visited, over 15 years ago. I was immediately awed by this sensory wonderland. I was delighted by the soothing sounds of the waves lapping, the fragrance of the surrounding sage, the taste of the lobster taquitos at Tioga Toomey’s overlooking the lake, and the relaxing ease of floating at shallow depths in the briny water. But the visual experience of Mono Lake is most unusual. The lake, nestled as it is on the dramatic eastern side of the Sierra Nevada crest, not far from Yosemite National Park, would be a sensational sight even at its historic level. Instead, though, we see a lunar-like landscape of strange and fascinating rock formations. I was filled with excitement exploring them in my canoe.

Reflections of tufa at Old Marina.

What happened here?

These highly unusual rocks, called tufa, are calcium carbonate formations that precipitate in Mono Lake’s briny water. The lake is saline because, like most of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, it has no natural drainage outlet. [1] Over time, evaporation concentrates minerals under the lake’s surface. The tufa form where the fresh local springs running down from the surrounding mountains enter the saline lake. [2] The minerals are crystalline, and so form these fascinating shapes.

Tiny tufa just starting to precipitate on the beach at South Tufa.

Decades or even centuries are required to create tufa towers such as we see today at Mono Lake, and the structures are exceedingly fragile. This special environment also supports colonies of endemic brine shrimp and native alkali files. [3, 4] Mono Lake is home to one of the largest nesting sites for native California Gulls, and a stopover site for many species of migrating birds. [5]

Courtesy of Mono Lake Committee

How is it that we are able to see all of these tufa without getting under the Mono Lake surface? Viewers of the classic California film “Chinatown” may be familiar with the activities of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in nearly entirely draining Owens Lake. [6] But Los Angeles’ thirst for water went beyond the Owens Valley all the way up to Mono Lake, about 144 miles km north. The Los Angeles Aqueduct was extended north, and LADWP began to divert water from the nearby creeks that had historically fed Mono Lake. [7] After diversions begain in 1941, the lake level dropped 45 feet until they were finally slowed in one of the most celebrated cases of in the history of environmental litigation. [8]

10 Things That Make Mono Lake Special

• Beautiful eastern Sierra location, nestled next to the Sierra crest

• Exposed tufa towers

• Home of the Kootzaduka'a People [9]

• Nesting site for California Gulls [10]

• A water source along the Pacific Flyway, a north-south route for many migrating birds [11]

• Endemic brine shrimp, an important food source for migrating birds [12]

• Alkali flies, also a food source for birds [13]

• Wonderful educational and art programs of the Mono Lake Committee [14]

• Dark sky environment, lovely for astrophotography

• The love of many people who have gasped with joy at the beauty of the lake

David Gaines, one of the founders of the Mono Lake Committee. Photo courtesy of the Mono Lake Committee.

How Mono Lake Was Saved

The precious, special, and beautiful environment at Mono Lake has fortunately not suffered the same fate as Owens Lake, which was virtually entirely drained and dried. [15] A group of students, led by, among others, David Gaines (pictured above), and Sally Judy, joined forces and went to fight for Mono Lake, forming the Mono Lake Committee to educate people about the lake and to advocate for it. [16]

In 1979, the Mono Lake Committee joined the National Audubon Society in suing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power under the public trust doctrine, arguing that bodies of water should be protected by the government for the use by everyone. In a landmark 1983 decision, the California Supreme Court agreed that the public had an interest in Mono Lake and that it should be protected. Proceedings moved from the court to the California State Water Resources Control Board, which in 1994 established 6,392 feet as a sustainable level at which the lake could be managed. [17]

Mono Lake Today

The State Water Resources Control Board created a compromise solution under which the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power continues to divert water from Mono Lake today. The lake level is examined every year on April 1 to determine the amount of water that LADWP is allowed to divert. On April 1, 2022, the lake level was measured at 6,379.9 feet, just a fraction of an inch under the 6,380-foot threshold that would have allowed LADWP to divert 16,000 acre-feet of water from Mono Lake, as it did in 2021. Because the lake level is lower in 2022, LADWP may only divert 4,500 acre-feet of water under the State rules. [18]

Despite this landmark compromise, Mono Lake’s level has not risen to the management level specified by the State Water Resources Control Board. Projections were that the lake would reach the management level by 2014, and the reasons why the higher lake level has not yet been reestablished are not entirely known. [19]

So, What Do We Do?

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles south in Los Angeles, water conservation efforts have been hugely successful and laudable. In 2020, the city received an innovation award for water conservation efforts. [20] Does LADWP still need the water it is taking from Mono Lake? Maybe it could afford to spare the lake a little, reduce diversions of its own initiative.

Perhaps you are an Angeleno. You might not have known where some of your water was coming from, and the problems LADWP was creating up north. You might have made efforts to conserve water yourself — replaced a thirsty lawn with a California native landscape, for instance. But you may still be concerned that, if Los Angeles gives up its water rights in the Sierra, at some point, this will create a water crisis for the city.

I would suggest that Los Angeles could reduce Mono Lake diversions, perhaps not in perpetuity, but for a few years. LADWP could create a healthier ecosystem at Mono Lake now, while still retaining its rights to the water in the future if a crisis situation arises.

The lunar landscape of Mono Lake, with a low lake level this past February, with significant distance between the lake surface and these tufa.

I hope that, if more Angelinos knew where some of their water was coming from, they would make further efforts to conserve. I hope that, with consciousness-raising and understanding, the people of Los Angeles could persuade their Department of Water and Power to reduce its water diversions from Mono Lake. I hope the migrating birds will continue to have a source of water in the eastern Sierra on their annual journeys. I hope that my niece and nephew, who live in Redondo Beach, will be able to enjoy this beautiful high desert location when they are adults. I hope that all of of us who treasure the magical uniqueness of Mono Lake may continue to enjoy the sensory delights we find in our special place. I hope for our future.

Summary

• Mono Lake is a beautiful eastern Sierra lake.

• Mono Lake has no natural drainage, so minerals concentrate in the lake, forming fascinating rock formations called tufa.

• Many bird species depend on Mono Lake for nesting and as a water source while migrating.

• Endemic brine shrimp live in Mono Lake, providing an important food source for birds.

• In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began diverting water from the streams that feed Mono Lake, draining the lake by 45 feet.

• The Mono Lake Committee and the National Audubon Society litigated successfully against LADWP under the public trust doctrine.

• The State Water Resources Control Board issued a 1994 Decision requiring that the level of Mono Lake be restored to a management level, set at 6,392 feet. Under the Decision, LADWP is allowed to continue to divert water from Mono Lake under controlled conditions, and must reduce diversions when the lake level is low.

• Despite this compromise, the level of Mono Lake has not risen to the expected management level.

• With conservation, LADWP may be able to reduce diversions voluntarily and restore Mono Lake to the management level.

Sources:

[1] Mono Lake Committee. “Geology.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/geology/

[2] Mono Lake Committee. “Tufa.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/tufa/

[3] Mono Lake Committee. “Brine Shrimp.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/brineshrimp/

[4] Mono Lake Committee. “Alkalai Flies.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/alkaliflies/

[5] Mono Lake Committee. “California Gull High Desert Rookery.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/birds/#california-gull-high-desert-rookery

[6] Wikipedia. “Owens Lake.” March 12, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake

[7] Wikipedia. “California Water Wars.” December 30, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars#Mono_Lake

[8] Mono Lake Committee. “Saving Mono Lake.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/savingmonolake/

[9] Mono Lake Kootzaduka'a Tribe. “Mono Lake Kootzaduka'a Tribe.” Undated. https://monolaketribe.us/

[10] Mono Lake Committee. “California Gull High Desert Rookery.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/birds/#california-gull-high-desert-rookery

[11] Mono Lake Committee. “Pacific Flyway.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/birds/#pacific-flyway

[12] Mono Lake Committee. “Brine Shrimp.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/brineshrimp/

[13] Mono Lake Committee. “Alkali Flies.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/naturalhistory/alkaliflies/

[14] Mono Lake Committee. “Field Seminars.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/fieldseminars/

[15] Wikipedia. “Owens Lake.” March 12, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake

[16] Mono Lake Committee. “Saving Mono Lake.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/aboutmonolake/savingmonolake/

[17] Ibid.

[18] Mono Lake Committee. “State of the Lake.” Undated. https://www.monolake.org/learn/stateofthelake/

[19] Ibid.

[20] Water Technology. “City of Los Angeles Lauded for Water Conservation Efforts.” April 29, 2020. https://www.watertechonline.com/water-reuse/article/14175122/city-of-los-angeles-lauded-for-water-conservation-efforts

Beth Zuckerman, self-portrait

I am a high-energy creature of passion, a photographer and an aerial dancer. Through my photography, I share with you my explorations of extreme environments, such as places of great geologic drama.

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Please support the Mono Lake Committee

Formal Education

In the fall of 2021, I took my first formal visual art class since high school, in black-and-white photography. 

I decided to do this more or less on a whim. I had met the instructor, Neeley Drown, at my monthly photo group. She made a Facebook post saying she had some spaces in her class, and that, for that term only, she was offering it entirely online. That last bit was critical for me, not only for COVID reasons, but because Cabrillo College is a couple of hours' drive away from me. As much as this scary and lonely COVID-infested world has limited our abilities to travel and see people in person, this miserable situation has also opened up opportunities for participating in faraway events from the comfort of our living rooms. 

I was entirely astonished by the amount that I learned. While I had been using an SLR for 30 years, and taken many workshops during that time, I had never before studied photography formally. The difference it made to my art is indescribable. I thought I had learned something about photography in the last 30 years. The class made me feel as if I had never known anything about photography before.

The topic of black-and-white photography was a particularly foundational one. Removing the color from an image reduces it to its essential elements. Black-and-white demonstrates so much more clearly that, as Neeley says, "light is our medium." When we have no color, we see so plainly the contrast, the lights, the darks, and the midtones. 

The most valuable lessons were the ones on Ansel Adams' Zone system. While Adams' system might seem overly technical, there is a real value in recognizing the gradations of lights and darks in a scene. I had been trying on my own to learn to see the world in black-and-white, but Neeley's lessons made the concepts much more comprehensible. The ability to see the tonal contrasts in a scene improves color photography as well.

The experience was also a lot of fun! It was art class! I had all sorts of fun projects to do, discovering new ways of seeing and developing new skills every week. The class focused my attention on my art and helped me grow as an artist. It was a wonderful opportunity to interact with other growing artists and feel like part of a community. Neeley pushed me in new directions, insisting that I try different things... that I, for instance, photograph myself right-side-up! 

I enjoyed the class so much that I am now taking another class, this time in color theory. I look forward to more fun and fascinating learning!

The Value of Rocks

Mono Lake, January, 2018

Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, “The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks!”

I'd like to say, first of all, humbly, that Cartier-Bresson was underestimating rocks. Rocks are the foundation, literally the bedrock, that determine everything else about a place, what plants can live there, what animals can live there. They underlie every living thing on our planet. And Adams and Weston of course were photographing extraordinary rocks.

But I think Cartier-Bresson was wrong on another level as well. Adams reportedly responded by saying, “the understanding of the inanimate and animate world of nature will aid in holding the world of man [sic] together." Adams' work, along, of course, with that of John Muir and others, was instrumental in raising consciousness about the beauty of our landscapes. In so doing, Adams helped to protect these landscapes from destruction, to preserve them for future humans to enjoy. Yes, the settings were also stolen from the natives, but at least they did not become disasters like Niagara Falls and Key West. By photographing rocks, Adams and Weston were communicating to the world the beauty, and the value, of the scenes they were displaying.

Art is a conversation between the artist and observers. The artist displays something and asks observers to observe it. In choosing the thing to display, the artist is making a value judgment, asserting that the subject is worthy of observation, of time and attention. The subject is worthy of time and attention even though it has no other practical purpose; it is just art. Some rocks are worthy of time and attention, even though they are just rocks.

Because art makes these assertions of value, fortunately or not, intentionally or not, art is inevitably more political than we might like to think. Who could take a picture of Mono Lake, or even Lake Tahoe, today, without making a political statement? In showing photos of such places, the artist inescapably calls for their preservation and protection. Every photo is a statement that the subject was worthy of being photographed. Every photo is a value judgment. 

So let us be conscious, as photographers, of the value judgments we are making, of the messages we are communicating. And let us speak for the value of rocks.

Time

Time. 

When you come right down to it, life is time. You get a certain amount of time to live, and no more. Your time is up. Life is time.

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its concomitant constant threat of death, has driven many of us to intense contemplation of just how much time we might have left, and how we can make the most of it. We have been reexamining the ways we lived before the pandemic, trying to decide what was valuable and should be retained or restored, and which time-wasting things (like commutes!) could be jettisoned or modified. 

Time weighed even more heavily on my mind as I took a recent photo trip to <a href = "http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=509">Bodie State Historic Park</a>. For those who don't know, Bodie is the best-preserved ghost town in California and perhaps the entire west. Miners descended upon the area in droves in mid-1870's, and the town grew to a population of about 8,500 people by the end of that decade. Like so many Gold Rush towns, most inhabitants had a rough, hard-drinking lifestyle, giving the town a bad reputation. The boom and bust happened in only a few years. The miners extracted the minerals from the Bodie Hills and took off in search of other riches as soon as the ore was depleted. By 1886, only 1,500 people were left, although a few inhabitants remained into the 1940's. Two catastrophic fires struck Bodie, in 1892 and 1932. Both times, firefighting equipment failed in a critical way. Most of Bodie's buildings have been lost to fire, and only 10% of the original town remains. In 1962, the remnants of Bodie became a historic landmark and were given into the care of the State of California, to be maintained as a public park in the state of decay at that time. Bodie is maintained in the 1962 condition, but with this decay arrested, so that we can see it as a ghost town. The curious may find more detailed history in <a href = "http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/509/files/BodieSHPFinalWebLayout2016.pdf">the park brochure</a>. 

As always, when exploring our California history, we should remember the original inhabitants, who were here before the Gold Rush and were displaced by the miners. A Northern Paiute group called the <a href = "https://monolaketribe.us/">Koodzaduka'a</a> inhabited, and still inhabits, the greater Mono Basin and the area including Bodie.  Millennia of human history in California have not been so carefully preserved, but have been almost entirely erased.

Bodie stands as a testament to change in time. The town displays life in the past, how it was similar, and how it was different. Some sights are familiar--hotel beds, a pool table in a bar, a globe in a schoolhouse, and the prominent steeple of the Methodist Church. But their styling is archaic, and decay abounds. Nothing is left of the beds but frames and springs. The pool table, with its beautiful lion feet, is covered with dust. The shriveled, wrinkled globe lies askew. The church is in fairly good condition, and the styling of churches has not changed much.

Looking into the Oddfellows Hall, which once hosted the Bodie Athletic Club, we see a trapeze and rings hanging from the ceiling, and weights for lifting. While weightlifting is still common, most gyms today are full of electric cardio equipment with screens, and stylized weight machines designed to isolate the muscles carefully. Only a few of us still swing from trapezes and rings.

My favorite room is the school classroom. You can see the uncomfortable, old-fashioned, inflexible desks, and an old blackboard. You can see maps depicting an earlier world, and hardbound schoolbooks printed on paper. You can almost picture the students sitting in the classroom, ignoring the teacher and picking on each other. At the same time, you see the wrinkled, decayed globe, and the ever-present dust settled on each item.

Bodie's antique vehicles are a delightful highlight of any visit. You can see old-fashioned carriages and sleds that had to be drawn by horses, and also more modern horseless carriages. My favorite is beautifully-preserved Lottie, a bright blue 1927 Dodge Graham truck. She is usually parked in front of a pair of old-style gas pumps, paired with a bullet-ridden Shell sign.

The contrast with modern times is particularly striking in the morgue. The heartbreaking child and baby coffins remind us of much higher infant mortality rates as recently as a century ago. While we still see appalling racial and economic disparities, the chance infants have of surviving their first few years of life is much greater now than it was when Bodie boomed. Those child and baby coffins are a reminder that, no matter how frustrating and frightening our times may be, this is one of the best times in history to be alive. 

As I walked around Bodie, picking out features to capture with my camera, I began to think about how, like the mandate to preserve Bodie in a state of arrested decay, photography is also an attempt to stop time. Each photograph captures a particular spot on the spacetime continuum, and freezes it the way it was there and then, for future eyes to observe. This is what we are doing when we take a photograph, isolating an individual moment in spacetime and preserving it. Photography is a way of allowing us to see into the past, selectively. As photographers, we are selecting which parts of the past will continue to be visible and seen.

Ultimately, of course, this is all a lie and a game. We cannot stop the passage of time, cannot arrest the decay indefinitely. We can look at pictures of our younger selves, but we are no longer the same. Eventually, what is left of Bodie will be burned and lost. But our photographs allow us to cheat a little, to remember the past more realistically than we would in our minds, and to share what was with others.

Images from my visit to Bodie can be found in the <a href = "https://www.flickr.com/photos/7388553@N07/albums/72157719495290240">first day album</a> and the <a href = "https://www.flickr.com/photos/7388553@N07/albums/72157719449997191">second day album</a> on <a href = "https://www.flickr.com/photos/7388553@N07/">my Flickr page</a>.

Feminine Photography

Homage to Ellen von Unwerth

Last year, I joined a photography group specifically for women and non-binary photographers. A younger, more shrilly principled Beth would have objected to such a thing as exclusionary, but a lonely, pandemic-addled Beth was desperate for companionship--and opportunities to show her exciting new work. Several of my photos were accepted for a show through this group, virtual now, to be presented in person later:  https://balladofourchangingworld.weebly.com/artists.html

We have an assignment for each week. Last year, the assignments were based on themes. Constrained by the limitations of the pandemic, some of the themes inspired me to create self-portraits, an entirely new art form for me. This year, our assignments are to create a response to a particular photo created by a woman or non-binary photographer. Many of the source photos have been portraits, so I have created self-portraits that responded to these.

I wanted to make responses to the source photos that were not mere imitations, but that incorporated some of my own creativity. One of the ways I accomplished this was by turning myself upside down. Frustrated by my inability to play with my friends in the aerial studio, I had purchased a portable aerial rig and set it up in the living room for Zoom classes. I found that I was unable to hold myself upside-down in the lyra well enough to take a successful photograph in the dimness of indoor light, but that, with a cabled remote trigger, I could make it happen in the sling (with a sufficiently high ISO). 

Seeing the weekly example photos presented has been an amazing experience. While I had previously gone to exhibits featuring well-known women photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Diane Arbus, I had never explored female photography, from all over the world, in this way before. A past Beth would never have wanted to acknowledge this, but these works are qualitatively different, and exploring them has brought me to a new understanding of myself and my place in the world as a woman.

I was particularly inspired by the unabashed femininity of Ellen von Unwerth's work. Acculturated into 1980's feminism, I had been taught that expressions of femininity were a service to the patriarchy and, as such, were frowned upon and discouraged. It has only been in my 50's that I have begun to feel more comfortable expressing the femininity that has always been in me. I had much fun creating my response to her image of Rose McGowan, Opulence: https://weheartit.com/entry/321104

Pandemic Progress

I have really, well and truly, despised the pandemic. I am an outgoing, affectionate, travel-loving, novelty-seeking, germophobic, urban artist with an intense social consciousness. Very many aspects of my personality were poorly suited for managing this miserable situation well. The unimaginable toll of lives the virus has taken worldwide, and the constant specter of grave illness and death hanging over those of us who have survived, have been cataclysmic. The wretched isolation, so necessary to keep as many of us as possible healthy, has been emotionally desolating.

As much as I have deplored the compulsive slowdown of my previous continually on-the-go, rat-racing, Bay Bridge-commuting lifestyle, being forced to stay home has been positive for my art. I have been fortunate to be able to work throughout the pandemic, from the safety of my home. As much as I have been frustrated by not being able to go much of anywhere other than within the house and yard (other than short bike rides and walks on nearby minor streets), conducting both my work and my social lives entirely through computers has meant that I haven't needed to spend any time transporting myself anywhere other than within the house and yard. The extra time has been enormously artistically beneficial. It is also possible that the emotional difficulties imposed by the pandemic have driven me to a more creative place. 

Having my choice of subjects narrowed to those that were readily available at home absolutely pushed my photography in new directions. I have always focused on landscapes rather than portraits, and landscapes were mostly unavailable to me. It's hard to shoot a landscape on a flat, 40 x 130-foot lot. As a skilled and experienced macro photographer, I found some solace in abstracting close-ups of my plants. I had spent two decades creating a lovely garden with a wide variety of succulents so that I could have some handy subjects right at home, not ever having had the idea that I might spend a year with these as my only available subjects. Being trapped in the same place continually afforded me the opportunity to perfect particular shots, trying again every day until I achieved just the effect I sought, and to observe the optimum lighting for each shot.

There has been light even in this darkness. While the pandemic has been good for my art, my art has also been good for me in the pandemic. I needed to make art, more than ever, just to survive.