Dam Yangtze

Photographers Linda Butler, James Whitlow Delano, Kathya Landeros and Bill Zorn share a preoccupation with the epic-scale changes wrought by contemporary technology on ancient landscapes and cultures. In China: Rivers of Change, which runs from January 4 through February 2 at the Viewpoint Photographic Art Center, they all examine the largest hydroelectric project ever undertaken: China’s Three Gorges Dam, which has required, among other things, the relocation of nearly 2 million people. The photographers have a lot to work with, and it shows in their contrasting styles. For instance, Delano, clearly a disciple of Cartier-Bresson, sets his decisive if oblique-seeming moments in mysterious auras of gauze-and-charcoal. To Zorn, on the other hand, Ansel Adams’ Boulder Dam pictures were the homework; he trades in a sort of hyper-lucidity, situating portrait subjects in magisterial landscapes and letting them look right at us. The effect, helped along with plays of focus and composition, is subtly, understandably confrontational. “In the name of progress the area was flooded,” Zorn says, “and the places I photographed are now under water.”