ROBERT DAWSON

About the Photographer

Robert Dawson has long been interested in how photography can be used to understand our relationship with the environment and the commons. He is also interested in photography’s ability to shape public awareness and understanding of the place we call home.

Dawson was recently awarded the 2018-2019 Fulbright Global Scholar award by the U.S. Department of State. Dawson's photographs have also been recognized by a Guggenheim Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, an Artists Grant from the Graham Foundation and an Artists Grant from the Creative Work Fund. He has also received grant from a Visual Artists Fellowship from the National Endowment For the Arts, a Ruttenberg Fellowship from The Friends of Photography, a Photographer's Work Grant from the Maine Photographic Workshops, a James D. Phelan Award through the San Francisco Foundation, and a Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize from the Center For Documentary Studies at Duke University. He served as a Panelist for the Visual Arts Fellowship in Photography for the National Endowment For the Arts in Washingto, D.C.

Mr. Dawson's photographs have been widely exhibited and are in the permanent collections of many institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of American Art, (Smithsonian Institution) Washington, DC; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Center For Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson; the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris: and the Carpenter Center For the Visual Arts at Harvard University.

Mr. Dawson was born in Sacramento, California in 1950. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1972 and his M.A. from San Francisco State University in 1979. Dawson served as a member of the Board of Directors of San Francisco Camerawork and later of the Friends of Photography. He is a founding member and served on the Board of PhotoAlliance from 2002 to 2019. He was an Instructor of Photography at San Jose State University from 1986 to 2014. He recently retired from being an Instructor of Photography at Stanford University after teaching there from 1996 to 2018.

His first book, Robert Dawson Photographs was published by Min Gallery in Japan (1988). The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland by Robert Dawson, Steve Johnson and Gerald Haslam was published by the University of California Press (1993) and was listed as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times. An exhibit sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences toured the state for three years.

Other projects include the Farewell, Promised Land Project with Gray Brechin. The book Farewell, Promised Land: Waking From the California Dream was published by the University of California Press (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. Another project was the Pyramid Lake Project with Peter Goin and Mary Webb. A book from this project, A Doubtful River, was published by the University of Nevada Press (2000). 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. 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.

Dawson's most recent book The Public Library: A Photographic Essay was published by Princeton Architectural Press (2014). This was a culmination of an eighteen-year photographic survey of the essential role of public libraries thoughout the United States. The book includes a forward by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett. The contains fifteen essays by writers such as Amy Tan, Anne Lamott, Charles Simic, Barbara Kingsolver, Philip Levine, etc. In 2015, the Library of Congress purchased the entire Public Library project archive for their permanent collection.

To purchase or ask questions about Robert Dawson's work please contact Scott Nichols Gallery at info@scottnicholsgallery.com. To contact Robert Dawson directly please email landscape@igc.org.