Arts, Etc.Fine Art

Little photographs big issue in L.A.

Photographer Jennifer Little snaps picture of students visiting her exhibit, “100 Years of Dust: Owens Lake and the Los Angeles Aqueduct,” Oct. 1 in the Carlson Gallery. Little stands in front of her photograph, “Intersection of the Los Angeles & California Aqueducts, Neenach, CA,” depicting the separation of the two different water sources, the former serving only the Los Angeles area while the latter services the rest of the state. Little also held a lecture before the reception describing her experience with Owens Lake. / photo by Daniel Torres
Photographer Jennifer Little snaps picture of students visiting her exhibit, “100 Years of Dust: Owens Lake and the Los Angeles Aqueduct,” Oct. 1 in the Carlson Gallery. Little stands in front of her photograph, “Intersection of the Los Angeles & California Aqueducts, Neenach, CA,” depicting the separation of the two different water sources, the former serving only the Los Angeles area while the latter services the rest of the state. Little also held a lecture before the reception describing her experience with Owens Lake. / photo by Daniel Torres

Cody Luk
Online Editor

Students and faculty members gathered in the Carlson Gallery Oct. 1 to view photographer Jennifer Little’s photographs on Owens Lake and the ecological and environment effects of the Los Angeles Aqueduct at the “100 Years of Dust: Owens Lake and the Los Angeles Aqueduct” photo reception.

“The water and drought crisis are so serious right now and a very timely topic,” Little said. “I was interested in the irrigation at Owens Lake because it’s just so unusual.”

Owens Lake is located in Owens Valley in Inyo County, California. It started drying up in 1913 when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power built and started operating the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

“I really liked that it’s capturing a different perspective of how Los Angeles gets water, just because we tend to think like, ‘Oh we’re in a drought like where is our water coming from or where is it going?’ and this shows the negative aspects of where we get our water,” said Courtney Britt, junior English major.

“That’s why I decided to come to it, and I really love it,” she said.

“The Los Angeles Aqueduct Cascades, San Fernando Valley, CA” is Britt’s favorite piece in the gallery.

The photograph is an aerial view of several freeways and the Cascades, the exact same location where crowds watched William Mulholland, the Los Angeles chief water engineer at the time, say, “There it is – take it,” when the Los Angeles Aqueduct opened Nov. 5, 1913.

“(The photo) definitely shows how much water there is in the city of Los Angeles and looking at it, there isn’t a lot left there,” Britt said.

“In my opinion, we should find a better way to get our water instead of taking water from these types of places and forcing them to basically dry up into a desert.”

Little frequently hikes and camps in the region near Owens Lake, and she started researching more about the situation after noticing the irrigation system on the dry lake.

She started photographing Owens Lake in May 2012, and she has returned frequently to document the mostly dried lake.

“I was also curious why the city of Los Angeles owns most of the land in Owens Valley,” Little said. “If you’re there, you would see signs everywhere that say ‘Property of City of Los Angeles’ or ‘Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’ and often ‘No Trespassing’ as well, so I was also just curious about that and there were a lot of books about this aqueduct, so it didn’t take long to find out more about it.”

In 2012 and 2013, she was at Owens Lake for a week during each of the four seasons, and she made many more trips in the summers of 2014 and 2015.

“LADWP Shallow Flood Irrigation Ditch, Owens Lake, CA” is one of Little’s favorite photograph in the series.

It depicts the water channel and the lake, with natural light shining on the small part of water in the center of the photograph.

The photograph is dramatic in focusing a viewer’s attention on the water.

Her other favorite photograph is “LADWP Shallow Flood Irrigation Zone, Owens Lake, CA,” which shows the water-based dust mitigation, costing $10 million per square mile, that recirculates water to keep the lake from drying up and blowing dust.

The focus of the photograph is the small parts of moist areas of Owens Lake as the sky’s vivid colors reflect on the water.

“I like them aesthetically because of the colors and composition that is in the photos and it speaks to me in a way,” Little said.

Owens Lake also contains the largest source of dust pollution in the United States due to the winds and dust storms that occur throughout the year.

The Lower Owens River is being restored with an environmental mitigation project due to a court order, and the LADWP redirected water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct back to the river’s original channel in December 2006, the first time in 93 years.

“How the water is allocated in Owens Lake to Los Angeles and how they’re trying to mitigate the dust problem there and all these solutions that aren’t working is kind of like a Band-Aid – it doesn’t seem like a real solution,” said Jessamine Rodil, senior English major. “I think these photos helped shed a light to (the drought).”

Rodil said many people are not aware of its problems, even though Owens Lake is not too far away from Los Angeles.

“A lot of people think that it’s a low key thing like it’s not really happening and they aren’t really doing anything to fix it, but I feel like it’s a huge problem and people should address it more,” Rodil said.

“I like the intermingling of the nature and industrialization because I just feel like the industrialization is kind of a negative feature in the pictures, but I think it’s how human civilization has approached upon the nature and how it’s messed up.”

Although there are several ongoing projects attempting to solve the ecological issues, it is not sufficient.

“They’re not reducing their water use nearly as dramatically as the Los Angeles media reports would imply, but they’re slowly replacing water dust mitigation irrigation bubblers with gravel and other projects and a process called tillage,” Little said.

During the reception, Little took pictures of many students standing next to her photographs at the reception.

She also held a lecture on her works at the Campus Center prior to the reception.

The “100 Years of Dust: Owens Lake and the Los Angeles Aqueduct” series has received many awards and recognitions, such as the 2014 Critical Mass Top 50 Award from PhotoLucida, and it was presented at galleries, conferences and museums around the United States.

The exhibit runs in the Carlson Gallery through Oct. 29.

Cody Luk can be reached at cody.luk@laverne.edu.

Jolene Nacapuy also contributed to this story.

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