Calaveras Dam

1932

Not on view

One of the leading California-based photographers of the mid-twentieth century, Lavenson is best known for images that evoke the region’s history through architecture. Here, however, she inventively captured a new engineering marvel, the Calaveras Dam in Alameda County, which was the largest earth-fill dam in the world when it was completed in 1925. Lavenson’s composition focuses on the structure apart from its surroundings and emphasizes its abstract form through the fall of light and shadow on its stepped edifice, the shape of which recalls ancient ziggurats and pyramids. Large dams symbolized progress in the 1920s, which is why Thomas Hart Benton included one in Instruments of Power, the largest panel in his America Today mural (see Gallery 909).

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Title: Calaveras Dam
Artist: Alma Lavenson (American, 1897–1989)
Date: 1932
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Dimensions: 24.1 x 19.3 cm. (9 1/2 x 7 5/8 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Gift of Albert L. Wahrhaftig, 1995
Object Number: 1995.591.1
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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