THE GREAT CENTRAL VALLEY PROJECT
Between 1982 and 1986 Robert Dawson and Stephen Johnson produced the Great Central Valley Project. The project was photographic survey and examination 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. We received major funding from the California Council For the Humanities to produce a symposium in connection with the exhibition at the Academy and from the California Arts Council to pay for the traveling exhibition. A book from the project, The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland, with writer Gerald Haslam was published by the University of California Press in 1993. Since that date it has received numerous awards including a listing as one of the Best Photography Books of the Year for 1993 by the New York Times, Book Show Award from the Association of American University Presses, Silver Medal for California Literature from the Commonwealth Club, Non Fiction Award from the Bay Area Books Reviewers Association.
The importance of the Great Central Valley Project is emphasized by the fact that the valley is so crucial to California's history and economy and yet remains relatively unknown as a region. Until this project, it had never been the focus of an interdisciplinary and interpretive effort of this kind. Problems associated with valley agriculture reflect similar problems throughout the West. Some of the problems explored by the project included: water use and ground water depletion, increasing salinity and pesticide contamination in the soil, and survival of the small family farm. In addition to examining the problems of the valley, the project was also an examination of the sense of place of the Great Central Valley. Dawson, Johnson and Haslam are natives of the valley and yet felt the need to eventually leave their home. Years later, when they came back to the valley to create this project, they brought a native's insight of their own home with an outside perspective.
"The Valley is beginning to fill with people and it is losing thousands of acres of cultivated land annually to urban and suburban development. It sometimes appears to natives that the shopping center has become the territory's leading crop."
- Gerald Haslam, Writer
"Someday we will have to plow up the malls to plant something we can eat."
- Arnold "Jefe" Rojas, Vaquero
