‘For water will not do’ is the end result of a ten year project that was designed to observe the historical forces behind, and the subsequent legacy left by the settlement of the Great Basin by the Mormons in the second half of the nineteenth century. The title comes from a statement attributed to Jedediah Grant on the topic of blood atonement from around 1850 and in this usage is a reference to the idea that water will not suffice to wash the deepest sins - only bloodshed will do. My interpretation in the modern context is that the increasingly unpredictable waters of the Colorado are not sufficient to meet the needs of the modern system that was pioneered and built in part by my Mormon ancestors. It is this context of history through which I observed the larger story of the Colorado and its relationship to modern American life. The story is no longer about my zealous, out-cast ancestors and their ultimate facilitation of westward expansion. Though their mark is indelible and enduring. This is a story of a declining river, a setting of harsh beauty and thirty-four million people with no reasonable alternative water source. This project is a search for some understanding of the historical and cultural forces that led to the extraordinary effort put forth to ‘tame’ a landscape. It is also an effort to record a complex environment in an unprecedented transitional state with a large slice of American culture inescapably in tow.

This project was shot primarily on 8x10 inch color negative film and printed at a minimum of 40x50 inches. The intention of course to capture minute detail - human artifacts, texture - and to convey the massive scale of these spaces on which we leave our collective markings. My ‘Field Notes’ section is exactly that - visual notes made over the years by means of digital capture before committing the images to film. These images have a distinctly different feel due to the medium and are thus in their own section. Both collections are available for print.