Jeff Rich

Watershed

May 6 - June 30, 2011

A common misconception of a watershed is that it’s all about the water. While water does play a large part, the land plays an even larger role by directing the water to a common point, such as a river or ocean. Thus human impact on the land directly affects the water that runs over it. With this project I intend to highlight this relationship between the land, water, and man, within the Mississippi River watershed.

This is a long-term series of work that aims to define the Mississippi River watershed, the largest watershed in North America, in terms of its smaller pieces. I intend to document the four corners of the watershed in a series of chapters.

The first chapter of the Watershed series, The French Broad River Basin, was the original focus of my work. In the 1950s The French Broad River was one of the most polluted rivers in the country. This work shows the constant change that occurs within the watershed of the French Broad River due to man's presence, as well as natural causes such as floods and erosion. It is my hope that by documenting the rivers of the French Broad, its citizens, and environs, this project will bring attention to the importance of the growing sustainability movement in this watershed and beyond.

The second chapter of the work will focus on the next river in this series of watersheds, the Tennessee River. I began by documenting the TVA Coal Ash Spill in Kingston, Tennessee in December of 2008. The Tennessee chapter of the work will be in sharp contrast to the French Broad chapter, in that it will focus more on the control that man wields over the Tennessee and its tributaries.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Jeff Rich’s work focuses on water issues ranging from recreation and sustainability to exploitation and abuse. Jeff explores these subjects by using long-term photographic documentations of very specific regions of the United States. Jeff received his MFA in photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. Jeff's project “ Watershed: A Survey of The French Broad River Basin” was recently awarded the 2010 Critical Mass Book Award. His work has been featured on Fraction Magazine and as one of Daylight Magazine’ s monthly podcasts and was included in Photo-Eye’s Photographer’ s Showcase. In 2011, Jeff was named as a "Flash Forward Emerging Photographer" in an international competition sponsored by Magenta Publishing for the Arts. https://www.jeffreyrich.com/