Bill Dewey channel reflections photograph — Bill Dewey, *Channel Reflections,* photograph, 6×9 in.

Artist Focus:
Bill Dewey

Bill Dewey uses distance, perspective, and scale to capture extraordinary landscapes and challenge our beliefs about photography and realism.

Bill Dewey, *Lenticulars over Camino Cielo,* photograph, 13×20 in.

Dewey reveals hidden textures and forms in his aerial photographs. Flying low above the ocean in late afternoon, he exposes a hammered glass surface in Channel Reflections. Cloud reflections are blurred, appearing like lights glowing from a world below.

His Cessna enables him to capture remarkable views and an intimate relationship with grandeur. Storm clouds simulate an armada of airships flying through mountain peaks in Lenticulars over Camino Cielo.

Bill Dewey, *Confluence, Owens Lake,* photograph, 16x16 in.

Bill Dewey, *El Monte Quarry,* photograph, 14x21 in.

Dewey subverts the scale of the landscape when photographing from directly above. Missing identifiable objects, the red gash in Confluence, Owens Lake could be a few feet or a mile. Cherry-colored brine running through the white salt flat further removes it from our airborne reality.

Gentle green and brown rows in Santa Ynez Valley Stripes could be mistaken for a close-up of corduroy until you start questioning what you are looking at. Are the green dots trees? Is the white line a road?

Bill Dewey, *Santa Ynez Valley Stripes,* photograph, 7.25×11 in.

Bill Dewey, *Wave 9420*, photograph, 14x21 in.

Dewey’s Wave series required him to wade into the ocean and lean down to capture wavelets along the Santa Barbara coast. Flash-frozen ripples then become colossal green glaciers. The closer he gets to his subject the more monumental the waves appear.

Bill Dewey, *Wave 7953*, photograph, 14x21 in.

Bill Dewey, *Wave 8913,* photograph, 14x21 in.

Bill Dewey, *Del Mar 7733,* photograph, 6.5×10 in.

Several years ago, viewing Del Mar — his childhood beach — via a webcam, Bill photographed his computer monitor and created a series of painterly snapshots of San Diego from two hundred miles away. Pixelated overlapping images from the webcam become portals to his past and give the photographs a contemporary scrim of nostalgia.

Bill Dewey, *Bunch of Walkers at Sunset,* photo on aluminum, 23x35 in.

Bill Dewey, *Del Mar 7983,* photograph, 6.5×10 in.

In the Torn Pieces series, Dewey deconstructs time and distance by photographing his own work. Bill photographed scraps from archives he planned to discard scattered over his studio floor. The photographs were virtual collages representing thousands of miles and decades of work — randomly thrown down, edges both torn and cut. Photos of the collages themselves appear in subsequent photos of the collages.

A breeze flips over one of the pieces in Second Chances, 6-7-20, Wind, final evidence of the creator’s fabrication.

—Cynthia Stahl

Bill Dewey, *Second Chances,6-7-20, wind,* photograph, 20x30 in.

Bill Dewey, *Torn Pieces of Landscape 5-5-20 w/o edges,* photograph , 20x30 in.

**Bill Dewey**

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Bill Dewey’s photography for the Historic American Building Survey

In addition to his creative work, Bill is an architectural photographer, specializing in large format documentation for the Historic American Building Survey. This program has been contributing photographs to the Library of Congress since the 1930's. Bill's work has included the 19th century pier in Huntington Beach, California, the Mare Island Naval Base in San Francisco and the massive Saturn rocket test stands used in the Apollo moon project at Edward's Air Force Base.

View Bill Dewey’s photographs in the Library of Congress archive.

Artist Focus: Bill Dewey

Artist Focus:
Bill Dewey