Rich Bergeman : The Paleo Lakes Project

Jan. 9 – March 13
Opening Reception: Friday, Jan. 9, 4-7pm

Gallery II
Umpqua Valley Arts Center
1624 W. Harvard Ave.
Roseburg, OR 97471
www.uvarts.com
541-672-2532
Open Tuesday through Fri 10am-6pm

During the late Pleistocene—over 10,000 years ago—Eastern Oregon was covered by vast inland seas that, over the millennia, slowly dried up, leaving the arid steppe landscape we’re familiar with today. The footprints those paleo lakes left behind—the dust-blown playas and shallow salty seas sprinkled across the High Desert—are what inspired this project.

History has always driven my work, but I usually focus on the human story, like the pioneer communities that sprang up or died out on the desert, depending on the availability or scarcity of water. This project is different. Here I’m looking back on a story that was centuries in the making, and it’s not something I was able to see at first. It’s taken years of seasonal forays into the High Desert to appreciate the spare elegance of its landscape, with its wide horizons and immense skies.

The challenge was to find a fresh way to share this story, and I found the answer in b+w infrared photography. Stripped of the color that can distract from form, and emboldened by IR’s dark, brooding skies, the High Desert becomes a dramatic panorama where the forces of nature and time are more readily revealed.