ROBERT DAWSON PHOTOGRAPHY

THE CONSCIENCE OF THE CITY: PUBLIC ART PROJECT

Imagine a world in which there is no sewage treatment. Think of what each of our lives would be like in this disease-ridden, foul-smelling world. In some ways it would be similar to the early nineteenth-century cities of Europe and America. At that time the modern ideas of the origins of infectious disease began. Coupled with this was the beginning of the great sanitation movement that changed the ways we treat waste. These improvements helped extend the average lifespan in the twentieth-century by an astonishing thirty-five years. The San Jose and Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant is a continuation of that nineteenth-century movement.

Robert Dawson has worked for six months with the City of San Jose's Cultural Affairs Office and the Environmental Services Department. He is the City's first Photographer-in-Residence at their Water Pollution Control Plant. Most of us are generally unaware of wastewater treatment until it doesn't work. Failure to sustain water infrastructures has been a telltale indicator of societal decline and stagnation. Dawson's photographs of our contemporary infrastructure depict a huge, complex but delicate machine. Approximately $1 billion will be needed to repair or replace parts over the next ten years. Dawson's work is intended to bring attention to this invisible part of our daily lives, and to help generate awareness of when government works.

The plant processes over 100 million gallons of sewage a day. The scale of the work done here is enormous. The length of the six-month residency allowed Dawson to explore most it. The People work diligently to keep the Plant functioning efficiently and the South San Francisco Bay alive. The Place consists of a massive infrastructure and surprisingly, includes areas of astonishing beauty. The Treatment is highly complex, environmentally sensitive and never ends. The Plant was first built in 1962. Dawsons rephotographs show the changes over the fifty-year History of the Water Pollution Control Plant. Three exhibits came out of this work. One was at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, CA in 2010. A long term exhbit was shown at City of San Jose's City Windows Gallery from 2010 to 2011. A permanent exhibit of the work is on display at the City's Water Pollution Control Plant. A catalog from the project is being planned. The title of the resulting work from the project is The Conscience of the City: Treating Wastewater in Silicon Valley.

"The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else.
In that livid spot there are shades, but there are no longer any secrets."
- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Primary clarifier with algae, Pipes gallery, Chain underwater, clouds, sun, San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory, Original blueprints of plant, Algae in partially filled secondary aeration tank, Panorama of Engine Room, Looking through forklift at Headworks, Machinist in yellow shirt, Man in tank installing pipes, Man inspecting pipes on engine, Man with orange cart, D7 CAT bulldozer, California dredge in evaporation pond, Bob Guiterrez, Adrian Vazquez in harness, Shadow and tunnel cover open, Cleaning and painting inside of tank, Pollutant charts, Parts in colored boxes, Panorama of pipes, Reclaimed water pipe, Reflections, clouds and railings, Panorama of tanks with workers, Secondary Blower Building, Waiting for the Governors in Engine Room, Rich Trejo, Toxicity test fish, Process water valve in Chlorine Basement, Scientists collecting water samples on Bay, Two scientists in lab, Ping Wu, Mountains and clouds, Secondary Aeration Tanks, Spiral staircase, Sprinklers in Secondary Equalization Basin, Swirling lines and reflections of railings , Tanks and parts, Colormetric analysis samples, Treatment tanks, Multicolored electrical wires, Wooden walkway near plant and outfall, Pumps and green cage, Overview of Water Pollution Control Plant, Man with knee pads on ESB roof , Men sucking water from tank, Yellow interior bracing in warehouse, Parts for Power and Air Only, Gas and air controls, Tanks and power equipment, Man in yellow t-shirt working on pipe, Evaporation pond and geese, Vietnamese man in warehouse, Circles and floating white dots, Reflection of construction on new building, Layers of lines above treatment tank, Metal shavings, Treatment tanks and Secondary Blower Building, Snapshots of workers showing fishing catch, Metal rod and cables above treatment tank, Panorama of tanks, Birds in flight near where treated wastewater enters San Francisco Bay, Chains in treatment tank, Worker with blue glove in tank, Worker repairing tank with green wall, Joe in white hardhat, Derrick in sunglasses, Workers and tractor with shadows of supervisors, Lab worker with visor, Swallows nests under overpass, Found in the sewer (grid)2.