Jeff Rich

Rail Bridge, Smith Mill Creek, Asheville, North Carolina January, 2006
C-Print, 30" x 37.5"

The photographs and video in Still Water are part of Jeff Rich’s photography project entitled Watershed, which highlights the relationship between land, water and man, focusing on the French Broad River, which runs through much of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. In the Fifties, the river was one of the most polluted in the country. It was not until the Clean Water Act of 1972 that limits were put on the amount of pollution industries are allowed to release into the water. But now weak enforcement of the act is causing it to become polluted once again.

Rich documents the French Broad River and the communities around it, emphasizing the importance of sustaining something that supports so much life. The water of the French Broad River can sustain many communities, and in return the communities should work to sustain it.

—Text by Lauren Whitton ‘10, ed. LA

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