I began this project, initially, as a way to explore my surroundings and the new, unfamiliar place I now called home. In the summer of 2016, I moved north from Los Angeles to the city of Stockton. I immediately began exploring the surrounding sleepy river towns along the San Francisco Bay Delta. These communities have existed here for centuries, quietly farming their land and building their towns, forcing the water back by building thousands of miles of levees to stop the flooding that is supposed to occur each year. Stockton, with it's port "“ the second largest in California, after Los Angeles "“ has seen exponential growth and along with that, a fall from grace after filing for bankruptcy during the 2008 recession. With that, it's seen increased crime and poverty with more and more residents fleeing. Stockton, at it's heart, is a romantic river town just like the others "“ Rio Vista, Isleton, Walnut Grove "“ but it's growth has been a constant threat to the quiet way of life so many locals have grown to appreciate. The warm summer nights on boats in the water, creeping gently up along the levees with fishing rods draped over the side and cranes flying low above the water are all commonplace to the people who live here.
Out here, you're thrust into an alternate universe comprised of communities that might only exist within the pages of Huckleberry Fin or Tom Sawyer. There are communities of people who live on houseboats in hidden marinas on islands that no one knows about, empty streets where the occasional kid can be seen playing alone and content, old buildings from the gold-rush era that stand tall in their decay, barely preserved by the families that have lived here for generations, farms that line the empty rural roads that connect each town to the other, even the last Chinatown tucked behind the façade of a few crumbling buildings. What we see is not typically what we get. The soul of this region is full of diverse characters that recognize the only thing that has remained constant here is the Delta and that it is this waterway that preserves this unique way of life.
Unlike the cities, where millions of people are nestled against each other yet remain so consumed in themselves, the people of the Delta seem to be stuck in a twilight zone. What this project will achieve through exploring themes of interconnectivity, human relationships with the natural world, and by investigating how the Delta has shaped the cultures and societies alongside it, is a record of California's forgotten valley. The diverse communities and cultures that thrive here are often overlooked and overshadowed by the region's tumultuous history and the immense growth seen by nearby cities. By photographing in these communities along the Delta, I peel back the layers of reality and force the viewer into a world where time seems to have stopped. Finally, at the root of all of this, is the reality that the natural world is one of the most important parts of our lives and in fact is the foundation in which these myriad cultures have lived symbiotically for so long.
