Salton Sea

Several years ago, Debbie Bentley visited the Salton Sea for the first time. The area was an oddity, full of dilapidated houses, rotting fish, and horrible smells. In spite of this, she found the lake itself beautiful, vast, and haunting. Such a dangerous beauty. Even though large amounts of the playa are currently exposed, the Salton Sea is still so large that from some vantage points, the earth's curvature hides the opposite shore. Currently the dust from the playa fills the air and causes health issues and crop damage - more exposed lakebed is certainly a public health crisis in the making. At the end of 2017, California mandated water transfers to the Sea ended. From this point forward, playa exposure will increase at an accelerated rate. This body of work is a portrait of the Salton Sea in 2018. The lake will never be as it was at that moment in time, nor will the remediation efforts woefully behind schedule to deal with the increasing dust.
The book addresses an enviornmental and public health crisis in the Imperial Valley of California. The photographs provide a portrait of the Salton Sea in 2018: the first year after water transfers to the lake ceased. From this year forward, playa exposure will escalate and toxic dust in the wind will increase
Debbie Bentley is a self-taught photographer currently living and working in Vacaville, California.
Mark Murrmann is a photographer, curator, and photography instructor. He serves as Photo Editor at Mother Jones magazine.