Robert Dawson Photography
Books
<span class="text"><font color="#000000" class="text"> <p><img width="427" vspace="4" hspace="10" height="334" border="0" align="left" alt="University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 1993 by Robert Dawson, Stephen Johnson and Gerald Haslam. It was listed by the NY Times as one of the best books of year." src="/users/RobertDawson6569/Image/The-Great-Central-Valley-co(1).jpg" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Co-authored by Robert Dawson, Stephen Johnson and Gerald Haslam. and published by the University of California Press in 1993. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times. Other awards include Award of Merit, American Associating of State and Local History; Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Nonfiction Award; Silver Medal for California Literature from the Commonwealth Club; Book Show Award from the Association of American University Presses; Finalist for 1994 Literary Award, Pen Center USA West; Golden Light Award, Maine Photographic Workshops. <br /> <br /> The project was a four-year photographic survey of California's intensely farmed agricultural heartland. The Valley's huge agricultural productivity makes it a major factor in California's wealth. Our project was concerned with the modern reshaping of the Valley's landscape and the ramifications of this throughout the American West. In 1986 a major traveling exhibition from the project began a statewide tour after opening at the California Academy of Sciences, the sponsoring institution.</p> <p>This book is out of print but a limited number of new copies are still available if you order directly from Robert Dawson. </p> <p><br /> <img vspace="4" hspace="10" alt="" src="/users/RobertDawson6569/Image//Min cover" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/The-Great-Central-Valley-co.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/The-Great-Central-Valley-co.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/Dawson-+-the-Roosevelts-Hyd.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/Arid-Waters.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/Farewell,-Promised-Land-cov.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/The-Great-Central-Valley-co.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/Min-cover.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/The-Great-Central-Valley-co.jpg" /><img alt="" src="file:///Users/robertdawson/Desktop/SiteWelder%20web%20site/Book%20covers/images/The-Great-Central-Valley-co.jpg" /></p> <div style="text-align: justify;"><img width="417" vspace="5" hspace="5" height="342" border="0" align="left" alt="" src="/users/RobertDawson6569/Image//Farewell,-Promised-Land-cov.jpg" />The book Farewell, Promised Land: Waking From the California Dream was co-authored with Gray Brechin. It was published by the University of California Press in 1999 in conjunction with a large exhibit at the Oakland Museum. This exhibit traveled throughout California for six years and was sponsored by the California Council For the Humanities. It was listed as one of the Best Books of the year by the Washington Post, Washington, DC; the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA; and the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, CA.<br /> <br /> Photographer Robert Dawson and writer Gray Brechin in 1992 won the prestigious Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize from the Center For Documentary Studies at Duke University. At that time, they proposed to look at California thirty years after the publication of Ray Dasmann's classic of the conservation movement, The Destruction of California. They then spent the next five years driving and flying over the state to record its dramatic transformation. As they did so, they also observed the close relationship between California's environmental and social history. For all the destruction which they witnessed, however, Brechin and Dawson discovered that California remains a remarkable source of innovation which is often fueled by love of the place and memory of what it once was. They conclude by focusing on individuals and organizations attempting to deal with California's environmental issues on a grass roots level. From river restoration in Los Angeles to community restoration in San Francisco, they discovered individuals who have dedicated their lives to restoring the promise of America's Promised Land.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> This book is now out of print.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br /> <img width="410" vspace="4" hspace="10" height="366" border="0" align="left" alt="" src="/users/RobertDawson6569/Image//Cover-A-Doubtful-River.jpg" /><br /> <br /> A Doubtful River was published by the University of Nevada Press in 2000 and was co-authored by Robert Dawson, Peter Goin and Mary Webb. The book received the Wilbur S. Shepperson Book Award from the University of Nevada Press and the Nevada Humanities Committee in Reno, Nevada. In 1994, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC purchased an entire set of 530 photographs from this project for their permanent archives. <br /> <br /> The Truckee River, a shallow river on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, flows from Lake Tahoe to empty a hundred or so miles to the northeast into desert-bound Pyramid Lake, at the geographic and spiritual heart of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation. The Truckee, a subject to the whims of the Sierra snowpack and the Great Basin's unpredictable but always scanty rainfall, is at best "a doubtful river." Yet, like most rivers in the arid West, its waters have been oversubscribed for decades, to users as diverse as ranchers, recreationists, the burgeoning population of Reno/Sparks and their suburbs, the Paiute people, and the fish and wildlife of Pyramid Lake and the Stillwater wetlands. The book looks at the complexity of water allocation in a region where conflicting traditions about the uses of the land and its resources, a rapidly growing population, and limited supply make water the most precious commodity of all.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">This book is in print and available through the University of Nevada Press and independent book sellers.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br /> <img width="405" vspace="4" hspace="10" height="396" border="0" align="left" alt="" src="/users/RobertDawson6569/Image//Min-cover.jpg" /><br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> This book was produced by the Min Gallery in Tokyo, Japan in 1988 in conjunction with a major exhibition of Robert Dawson's photography in Tokyo. Dawson also travelied on a speaking tour to several Japanese cities including Osaka and Kyoto. The book was distributed throughout the United States by Aperture, Inc. <br /> <br /> The content consisted of work from several projects that Dawson had finished or was working on at the time. This included work from <u>The Mono Lake Series</u>, <u>The Great Central Valley Project</u> and <u>The Water in the West Project</u>. It included an essay by Ellen Manchester.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">This book is out of print. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <img width="399" vspace="4" hspace="10" height="357" border="0" align="left" alt="" src="/users/RobertDawson6569/Image//Arid-Waters.jpg" /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Dawson, along with his wife Ellen Manchester, was founder and co-director of the Water in the West Project, a large-scale collaboration with several other photographers. His work, along with others' from the project, was published in A River Too Far: The Past and Future of the Arid West (1991) and Arid Waters: Photographs From the Water in the West Project (1992). Both books were published by the University of Nevada Press. Arid Waters was editied by Peter Goin and included text by Ellen Manchester. A large body of work from all the project members was collected by The Center For Creative Photography in Tucson as a permanent archive of the Water in the West Project. <br /> <br /> The Project was a response to the crisis of water in the West. Members photography showed how water was not a commodity or a legal right, but the most basic source of life. <br /> <br /> As a collaborative project, Water in the West represented a wide range of interests and concerns from agricultural practices in western Kansas to water rights on the Paiute Reservation at Pyramid Lake in Nevada. Project members in the book included Mark Klett, Terry Evans, Laurie Brown, Peter Goin, Robert Dawson, Martin Stupich, Gregory Conniff, Wanda Hammerbeck and Ellen Manchester. <br /> <br /> This book is in print and available through the University of Nevad Press and independent book sellers.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>UPCOMING BOOKS</strong></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">Two new books will be published of Robert Dawson's photographs. The first will be available in the Fall, 2008 and will be an on-demand digitally produced mongraph entitled <strong><em>What We Share The Photographic Projects of Robert Dawson 1984-2008</em></strong>. It will contain sixty images from his current projects. These include <u>The New Deal Legacy Project</u>, <u>The American Public Library Project</u>, <u>The Global Water Project</u>, and <u>The Water in the West Project</u>. Most of these images are also on this web site. The book will be published by Cavallo Point and Edition One Studios and is part of a series of books published by the Cavallo Point project.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;">A large-scale book will be published of Dawson's photographs by the University of California Press in the Fall, 2009 and will be titled <strong><em>When Government Worked The Legacy of the New Deal in California</em></strong>. It will include text by D.J. Waldie and a number of historical images from the New Deal period. It will also contain approximately 150 photographs that Dawson made between 2004 and 2008. We now live in relatively affluent times off the work of people living through hard times of the Great Depression in the 1930's. Most of this work is now forgotten or taken for granted. An important goal of Dawson's project was to bring attention to this invisible gift from the past so that we may consider some of the ideals of the New Deal as a model for the future.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div></font></span><br>
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