People, Places, Things: The Dalles, Oregon, 1988

At the hands of climate change and human mismanagement, the American West has fallen victim to epic devastations: wild-
fires, drought, excessive heat, flooding, species decline and destruction. Most of the images in [Scene Shifting] were made in the late 1980s through 1990, and reveal a time when these changes were gestating and not quite as visible as they presently are. [...] In these pictures, amid the residue of a past era, vast open spaces abound, rivers and lakes are still full. Transformations of the magnitude revealed here are all but invisible in the short term, appearing to develop slowly—similarly, in fact, to our own aging process. We fail to recognize their gravity until we are forced to assume a defensive position. But looking back, as these photographs enable us to do, it becomes apparent that these haven’t been slow changes at all. Quite the opposite. They have unfolded in just a half-second.

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