Chronicling Delta's changing landscape
Photo exhibit defines region's very essence
Alex Breitler
RecordNet
04/08/2010
STOCKTON - Back when newspapers were black and white, photojournalist Rich Turner kept a Nikon loaded with color film in the trunk of his car.
And when work was over, he went out to chase the perfect Delta sunset.
He called it "creative therapy."
"I'd be driving home and see the nice light, sunset light or whatever," said Turner, now 62. "I'm kind of wrung out from the day. So I'll miss my freeway exit and keep following the light.
"It was a pleasure to get in touch with something positive."
Thirty years later, Turner is putting the best of his best on display at the Tidewater Art Center & Gallery in downtown Stockton.
His work doesn't stop with sunsets but includes scenes that define the very essence of the West Coast's largest estuary.
Paint-chipped, abandoned motel cottages in Terminus. A farmer watering his sheep at sunup. Tanker ships navigating the narrow thread that is the Deep Water Channel.
In a community where many people don't know where or what the Delta is, Turner says he hopes his art can educate and illuminate. His collection also demonstrates how prone to change the Delta has been - and may continue to be.
Take that rustic old motel that he shot in the late 1970s or early '80s. Turner had tossed the photo in a drawer and forgotten about it. Until he drove by one day and saw the cottages were razed.
"There's a modern self-storage unit there now," he said.
He retrieved the photo from the drawer, and now it's one of his prized shots.
On Twitchell Island, a row of skinny poplar trees - the visual focus of one of Turner's most memorable sunset shots - has been removed. All but one of the trees are gone, along with other riparian brush on the levee. "The Delta is the ever-changing landscape," he said.
