Joan Dinkelspiel: Layers of Water

Joan Dinkelspiel (b. 1945, San Francisco) pairs contemplative photographs and text, to recalibrate our connection with Pacific Northwest bodies of water – ocean, rivers, and creeks.  A recent graduate of the Thesis Certificate Program at the Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW), Ms. Dinkelspiel has public art on display in the Seattle Metro bus shelter project and in The Fence Project in collaboration with Friends of the Waterfront Seattle.  Her work also has been shown at a medical clinic in Seattle’s Central District, at PCNW, and in private collections.  Her editorial work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere.

“In the early 1950’s, my sisters and I bent over the shores of a creek beside a wetland to inspect small frogs hopping in the cracked mud.   Come winter, we cheered when the creek overran its banks and friends waterskied on the football field, and school closed.  The Army Corp of Engineers later encased the creek in cement and ended the frogs and the flooding.  It felt like a wrenching death to a young child who played alongside frogs.  In that fast-growing 1950’s suburbia, domestication of landscape and waterways has instilled nostalgia for wildness.  Layers of Water navigates our complex relationship with Pacific Northwest waters and the consequences of our need and desire to harness water’s power.  Black and white photographs, along with a “menu” of narratives about specific bodies of water, draw on layers of meaning and place. ”