Bonneville Dam

Author's Comments

I will admit I am not always drawn to dams. There is a coldness to the engineering, a sense that the photograph has already been made by someone else with better access. But Bonneville surprised me, and it surprised me most in October, in the middle of the afternoon, when the sun comes in low across the gorge and the basalt walls go warm against the cool concrete of the spillway. That contrast is the photograph. The river running flat above the dam, the chaos of water below, the dark cliffs holding the whole thing in place. The fish ladders are their own quieter project. Underwater, behind the viewing glass, the salmon push upstream in a green half-light that does not photograph easily but stays with you. I have tried to make that image work and mostly failed. What does work is the wide view from the Oregon shore in afternoon light, the dam reading as a long horizontal against the vertical of the gorge walls. The scale only registers when you give it room. Come in fall. The summer haze has lifted by then, the runs are active, and the afternoon light lasts long enough to work both the wide shots and the smaller details around the powerhouse. This is not a place that gives up its photograph quickly. It asks you to stand with it for a while.

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