PULLMAN – The Museum of Art at WSU will be showcasing photography by Don Normark in the upcoming “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land: Issues of Eminent Domain” exhibition. The exhibition is on display through Dec. 19.A public reception will be held at 6 p.m., Oct. 8, in the Museum of Art, with a tour of the exhibit by Don Normark at 7 p.m.
In 1948, Normark happened upon Chavez Ravine, an area of three Mexican-American neighborhoods less than two miles from the City Hall of Los Angeles. He felt at home with the lively simplicity of these communities that offered a retreat from the gritty city of Los Angeles. He befriended individuals as he photographed them—faces focused on their embrace of daily life—finding sweet, empathic moments of expression that monumentalized their resilient and timeless existence.
The year after Normark made his photographs, the city, using the power of eminent domain, evicted all residents of the ravine to make way for low-cost housing. This was the McCarthy era. The next city council thought that low-cost housing sounded like creeping Socialism and canceled the housing contracts. They gave the land, instead, to Walter O’Malley, who was seeking a new home for his Brooklyn Dodgers.
“Every so often, a photographer comes upon a subject that at the time the photographs were first made, had only personal or relative merit, and yet over time becomes uniquely meaningful,” said Chris Bruce, WSU Museum of Art director. “It’s a ‘back to the future’ thing that only photography can do. I think, for example, of Astrid Kurcher’s portraits of a scruffy young rock ‘n roll band, playing Hamburg’s raunchy clubs and taverns – before they were The Beatles. Who would have known?”
“Certainly Don Normark did not know that the Brooklyn Dodgers would take over Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles a decade after he made these stunning photographs,” Bruce said. “ And while this is something only photography can do, it takes a very sensitive photographer who can perceive something special about a person or place to capture something so moving that you’d miss it, even if no one knew it would be lost.”
Normark’s photographs of the once beautiful Ravine and its’ inhabitants stand as a testament to our propensity to carelessly destroy things we should embrace.
“Embedded in the exhibit, ‘This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land: Issues of Eminent Domain,’ there is a poignant reminder that progress, if not for the common good, is not necessarily progress,” Keith Wells, WSU Museum of Art curator, said. “From the nostalgic mementos collected by a young photographer, depicting the bonds of family and culture in the pastoral setting of Chavez Ravine, to a much more weathered eye, capturing the urban nirvana of community garden in Los Angeles, this exhibit explores the notion of eminent domain with Don Normark’s sensitivity to the beauty and tranquility found in simple pleasures.”
The Museum of Art is located on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium in the Fine Arts Center on the WSU campus. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., open until 7 p.m. Thursday, closed Sunday.
