Owens Lake

I mean, they take microscopes to see them in some cases, right? And so Tristan is, is used to, uh, building his own optical devices, among other things, so he can actually photograph these things and make them apparent to people, visitors to the museum.

And it-- what's nice is you don't know if the exhibitions are about reality or if they're imaginative, if they're made-up stories, right? So Tristan has a relentlessly curious mind, and he, he was part of a group called the Metabolic Studio in Los Angeles at one point that went out to the Owens Dry Lake and- Tristan and, and a buddy discovered that the chemicals that are in that very briny, almost dry situation, right, with these pools of water left over, contain all the chemicals that you need to develop film.

And so they got a container truck, a small container truck, drilled a hole in the side of it, made a camera lucida, right? So a, a lens-less and then sometimes len-lensed camera.

And you take developing paper, big sheets of developing paper, right? And you stick them up on the opposite wall on the inside of the dark container, and you uncover that hole, and you expose it for a while, and then you cover the hole, and you've got a...

Yeah.

So I mean, w- when Cerro Gordo was a booming town, below Cerro Gordo there was a lake called Owens Lake, and it was a massive lake, seven miles across, 70 feet deep.

It had a lot of agriculture in O- in Owens Valley.

It was a very big part of this community.

That's how we're gonna solve the issue." And so slowly, uh, Mulholland with the Department of Water and Power, which is the origin of that department is what Chinatown's based on.

Um, slowly Mulholland came out here.

He had officers posing as ranchers buying up ranch land under the guise of, "Hey, we're gonna have these different things." Um, eventually- They own enough land where they redirected the river that feeds Owens Lake, Owens River into the LA Aqueduct, and directed it two hundred miles away to Los Angeles.

And that's what supplied Los Angeles with the drinking water that it needed to prosper.

And of course, on a trip to discover primordial waters, I was actually faced with two dry lakes.

The dying shores of the Salton Sea was the first one, and then the dried up Owens Lake.

So in my imagination, I never thought that that's what it would look like, the Owens Lake.

There's still a glimmer of blue there, so when you see it from the side of the road, you can sort of trick yourself into thinking that the water is still there.

But as you start to get closer, you understand that glimmer is almost a kind of mirage.

There's basically just a humid lake bed reflecting the colors of the sky.

So originally, the lake was in the Owens Valley.

It was the Owens Lake, and that's how I had imagined it as it was originally when it was discovered, the way Mulholland saw it.

waters, I was actually faced with two dry lakes.

the dying shores of the Salton Sea was the first one, and then the dried up Owens Lake.

So in my imagination, I never thought that that's what it would look like, the Owens Lake.

There's still a glimmer of blue there.

So when you see it from the side of the road, you can sort of trick yourself into thinking that the water is still there.

It's like an illusion.

There's basically just a humid lake bed reflecting the colors of the sky.

So originally the lake was in the Owens Valley it was the Owens Lake and that's how I had imagined it as it was originally when it was discovered the way Mulholland saw it and then I realized an actual entire alpine looking lake was stolen and redirected towards the city and that image kind of stayed with me and seeing the lake as it is now really sort of sedimented the whole image and the whole idea I had about the beginning of Los Angeles and how the water theft occurred.