The Course of Water – Fieldnotes from California’s Owens Valley explores the environmental and social histories of California’s Owens Valley by attending to the implications of its peculiar hydrology. A stolen river, a dry lake kept wet, Sierra snowmelt, turquoise springs: water takes strange paths in this desert landscape, rerouted by the lives of the people – Indigenous, settler, internee – who have called it home.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a lack of water resources threatened to stall the growth of Los Angeles. The city began diverting water from the Owens River – over 200 miles away – culminating in the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. This led to the eventual desiccation of Owens Lake and much of the surrounding valley. To date, Los Angeles has spent billions of dollars mitigating carcinogenic dust by transforming the dry lakebed into a wetland.

To represent the allusive richness of natural and human flows in the Owens Valley, Todd Stewart (US) pairs his photographs of the region with select archival images, creating a complex visual map that the writing and notes of Robert Bailey (US) further deepen. What emerges is an occasion for viewers and readers to navigate thematic currents that intersect like the natural and artificial channels of this singular watershed.