CALIFORNIA WINTER: THE UNFINISHED VOLUME

Archival Pigment Prints, variable sizes, 2014-present

California… the wild west, Hollywood dreams and movie sets, salt flats, deserts and Death Valley, earthquakes, the Redwood forests and the sand dunes of Edward Weston. This was the California I thought I knew when I moved to Southern California from Brooklyn in the fall of 2014. As I became more immersed in the pleasure of the warm days and breezy nights, I became increasingly aware of the four-year drought in Southern California and began receiving sad communiqués from the family and friends I left behind in the coldest, nastiest winter in decades.  It was if all the snow that did not arrive in Colorado, water destined for California’s thirsty cities, was dumped on the Northeast. These pictures are a reflection on guilty pleasure, distance, drought, borders and life in the clichés of California.