Award Winner: "Against the Wall" by Louise Russell
AWARD WINNER
Against the Wall
Louise Russell
Artist Statement:
Reverence: San Diego River
Much of the San Diego River is invisible. She flows 52 miles from Kanaka Flat near Julian through Mission Valley to the sea at Ocean Beach. She is seen mainly from bridges in the busy Mission Valley area and in the news when she floods streets in the rare downpours.
Beauty is the guide to creating these photographs and, as Robert Adams notes, beauty includes elements that suggest the troubles of the place. For the San Diego River these troubles started with taking the land from the Kumeyaay Native Americans in 1769. Today some of the troubles are the unsheltered people living alongside the riverbed and the tons of trash, some stuck in the mud and other flowing to the sea. Even so, we can embody the wonders here and feel a presence that is timeless.
The images are captured with an 8” x 10” Leonardo pinhole camera with black and white film, processed in my darkroom, then scanned and edited in Photoshop.
I acknowledge that the land where I capture and produce these photographs is the unceded,
traditional territory of the Kumeyaay Band of Nations.
Louise Russell
