Entire chapters of the weird and troubling story of the Salton Sea unfurl from each of the photographs in Kim Stringfellow's thought-provoking show at Michael Dawson Gallery. The images are unsentimental, quiet and informative. At once they riff on the melancholic appeal of ruins while posing questions about a future course -- ecological, commercial and otherwise.
The Salton Sea is California's Pompeii, a mythic and wondrous disaster. Historians trace its beginnings back to a "creation flood" in 1905, an accident of nature and culture alike, which humans aggressively exploited, determined to make a profit. Entrepreneurship and opportunism form the bones of the story, ecological adaptation its flesh and soul.
Stringfellow has been trekking to the area from her home in San Diego since 1995, photographing, collecting artifacts and researching. The 10 pictures in the Dawson show appear, among others, in her new book, "Greetings From the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905-2005." In this concise, compelling account of a fallen paradise, Stringfellow describes the Salton Sea as "a study of contrasts, a compendium of the unexpected and ephemeral."
The photograph "Abandoned Trailer" makes the point stunningly. Its subject -- an oxidized, encrusted metal shell -- sits sunken in a broad pool of liquid rust, the water's edges salty and crystalline. Green buzzes against orange, the sky's sharp, clean blue putting a cap on the friction. The "sublime and surreal beauty" that captivated Stringfellow has pungent origins: brine and bacteria in the water, industrial and agricultural runoff that have made the sea an ecological mutant, littered with corroded debris.
Everything that flows into the sea stays in the sea, becoming concentrated and potentially toxic. The extreme salinity has killed off most of the fish population. Birds feeding on the rotting fish carcasses spread botulism among the avian population, which includes numerous threatened and endangered species that make their primary home there.
Tourists to the area, once plentiful, have naturally become scarce as well. A photograph of the desolate and dry Salton City golf course, once a destination for celebrities, looks like a scene of war reportage from Iraq.
An image of an abandoned residence is similarly redolent of violent decline. Bare mattresses are stacked askew in the trashed bedroom. Amid the grit on the floor are clumps of pigeon feathers, like the severed wings of the whole enterprise of turning the area into agricultural heartland, vacation oasis and resort community.
