Dorothea Lange & Pirkle Jones: Death of a Valley

“The Berryessa Project was one of the most meaningful photographic experiences of my professional life. When Dorothea Lange, a friend, and colleague, invited me to collaborate on this project with her in 1956, I looked forward to the experience.” –Photographer Pirkle Jones.

Death of a Valley was collaborative photography essay completed for Life Magazine by Lange and Jones in 1956. The goal of the project was to document the final year of the Berryessa Valley in Napa County California as the area was to become a lake with the construction of the Monticello Dam.

The resulting images are historical and cultural documents as well as fantastic twentieth century photographs printed in vintage silver gelatin. Also included are enlargements of selected vital images. This exhibition is in association with Lumiere Gallery of Atlanta and the Pirkle Jones Collection at the University of California Santa Cruz. ​

Featuring photographs by two of the 20th century’s most important photographers, Death of a Valley is a nearly 70-year-old story full of contemporary issues such as water policy, private property rights, land conservation and local governance vs. state and federal jurisdiction.​

Dorothea Lange is famous for her social realist images, including the iconic Migrant Mother which many consider THE image of the Dustbowl and Great Depression era of the 1930s. In 1956 she convinced Life magazine to commission a photo essay documenting the last year of the Berryessa Valley, including the town of Monticello, roughly 80 miles northeast of San Francisco. The entire area was due to be submerged with the opening of the Monticello Dam and the creation of Lake Berryessa to provide water for irrigation and recreational purposes.

Lange then invited Ansel Adams protege Pirkle Jones to collaborate on the project. 

The essay proved unsettling for Life, and they declined to publish it. In 1960, the photographic journal of the Aperture Foundation published thirty of the photos as an essay entitled “Death of a Valley.” These photographs were then exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and later at the Art Institute of Chicago. Since then, the project has been largely forgotten; until now. The Booth Museum exhibition, organized with Lumière of Atlanta and the Special Collections and Archives at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Robert Yellowlees Special Collection, will include over 80 images, most having never been exhibited before.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Image:  Grape Picker; 1956, Pirkle Jones, Gelatin silver print.