Lana Z Caplan – Oceano – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Douglas Stockdale •

Whose land is it? This is probably the underlying question for Lana Z Caplan’s photodocumentary project of an expansive region of coastal California, which also represents a broader question for all of North America and the world beyond.

Her specific subject is an area generally identified as Oceano, located on the Pacific coast of middle California, historically the land of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (ytt) Northern Chumash, who still claim parts of this area, but also overlapping ownerships by the state of California, US Federal National Wildlife Refuge and corporate land title by the Chevron Corporation. Implicitly, the State and Federal ownership of large expanses this area is with the general public, which is part of the social tension that is created by how groups of individuals want to use, if not exploit, this same area, and who are the subjects of her book.

As a photographer, the Edward Weston iconic Oceano photographic mystique still lingers for me, as well as it did initially for Caplan and her jolt of recognition of the current use by hordes of weekend dune-rippers camping in their vehicles and thundering ATVs. Which of course is just part of the greater story. Her portraits of the participants atop their ATVs is straight forward representation, a contemporary August Sander taking photographic portraits of the encompassing social order.

A counterpoint is offered by Hanna Rose Shell in her essay about her encounter with “a defiant aggression in the air, infused with the saltwater, and a controlled chaos of vehicles large and small reviving engines, spinning in circles. The smell is a mixture of chorizo and motor oil.”

Another stake-holder in this contested region are the original ytt Nothern Chumash who still are regarded as having the historical and original land-use as well as who now traditionally work the beaches and ocean for food. They regard this as a land that is “spiritual, breathtaking in its beauty, and fragile in ways we don’t understand”. As a nation, they did not have a concept of ‘ownership’ of land similar to the colonial powers who concepts of land ‘ownership’ who subsequently came to lay ‘claim’. Which further complicates the Chumash access and use of this area. Whose land is it?

Caplan intertwines her narrative with beautiful classic ‘Weston-istic’ black and white landscapes of beautiful pristine dunes, a testimonial to the future, when over time, nature and the sand will overcome everything and all traces of mankind will be erased. Similar to how the expansive 1920’s movie set for the DeMille classic Ten Commandments has mostly disappeared under the unrelenting wind-blown sands. The dune landscapes are provided as juxtaposition of positive and negative versions, reminding me of Wynn Bullock’s negative prints, who was a later contemporary of Weston’s West Coast Landscape genre. The inclusion of these classic landscape photographs in Caplan’s sequencing provides metaphorically jarring contrast to the portraits of the ATV community.

The last layer in her narrative relates to another quality about the sand itself, which is how it presents a potential health risk due to the small particle size that once breathed in, will remain in the lungs indefinitely. There is the health risk to those who want to play with their ATV’s on the dunes, while another health issue is the sand clouds created by the ATV’s that expose those in live in the downwind communities to these invasive sand particles. That health issue has led to a confrontation between those who wish to exploit the use of the dunes for their personal pleasure against those who live in the local community who are adversely impacted by what occurs on the dunes by others. Whose land is it?

I agree with Shell’s overall assessment that Caplan “explores the Dunes and finds layers of communities that have been alternately celebrated and erased: her project’s multiple narratives traverse space and time.” As well as raising the enduring and vexing question as to whose land is it, an ongoing question of land use that engages many Americans.

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Douglas Stockdale is a visual artist and Senior Editor/Founder PhotoBook Journal. Caplan previously participated in Stockdale’s Creative Book Development Workshop with Medium Photo in which this book project was extensively discussed while still in development.

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Oceano (for seven generations), Lana Z Caplan

Photographer: Lana Z Caplan, born in Philadelphia, PA and resides both in San Diego and San Luis Obispo where she teaches, California

Essays: Hanna Rose Shell, Mona Olivas Tucker, Matthew D. Goldman

Text: English

Hardcover, embossed, casebound sewn, 128 pages, 75 color and b/w illustrations, illustrated index, printed and bound in Germany, ISBN 978-3-96900-123-3

Photobook Designer: Laura Pecoroni (Kehrer Design)

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