HIDDEN WATERS
Disappearing DryLand Springs
Springs exist as living archives of both human and natural history. For millennia, they sustained life, guided migration, and shaped cultural reverence for water. In the arid West, they remain rare lifelines that support far more biodiversity than their size suggests. Yet today most are declining due to over-extraction, climate change, and neglect, and our awareness of them has dried up.
This loss is both physical and perceptual. Each generation inherits a more degraded environment than the last, unaware of the abundance that no longer exists—a phenomenon ecologists call shifting baseline syndrome. Springs can vanish without spectacle, and their absence is easy to overlook. Photography offers a way to document these subtle changes and preserve memory.
My connection to these waters began in a bone-dry Arizona town, where scarcity shaped daily life. Conversations with intertribal Water Keepers deepened this awareness, as they described ancestral springs disappearing across generations — losses both ecological and cultural.
Inspired by Maynard Dixon, I use a muted palette to evoke aridity as I observe each spring’s subtle alterations, traces of human impact, and ongoing resilience. Working at the intersection of fine art and ecology, my images reveal how waters have been shaped by generations of use and intervention, emerging as layered archives that invite us to notice, remember, and care for what is often unseen.