Empire hydraulique

“A hundred years hence the United States will be an Empire, such as the world never before saw… All through the Western region, much of which is now arid and not populated, will be a population as dense as the Aztecs ever had. Irrigation is the magic wand which is to bring about these great changes.”
John W. Noble, United States Secretary of the Interior, 1893

I have always been irresistibly attracted to the American West, its almost magnetic sense of space. It would have been impossible to ignore the landscape, its noticeable scarcity of water, the hundreds of miles of dusty, rocky terrain stretching on both sides of the road.

Characterized by aridity, how did the West give rise to such sprawling cities - Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas - and how did it become the epicentre of technology, entertainment, and a major source of agricultural products, in short, an essential part of American power?

Empire hydraulique is a long-term project, initiated in 2018 and covering a dozen American states. It attempts to explore the past, present and future of what is, arguably, the most ambitious semi-desert civilisation project in our history.

Since 1902, and the implementation of the Reclamation Act, the fierce ambition to tame the geological and hydrological forces of a region the size of the European Union has given rise to an infrastructure for the manipulation and control of water on a scale never known: more than 12,000 dams, thousands of kilometres of canals, sometimes literally crossing mountains with huge pumping stations. 

The project investigates some of these most emblematic sites and the "oasis civilisation" they made possible, but also reveals, beyond the simple engineering feats, the traces of a history of controversy and conflict, social consequences and environmental damage. 

It also attempts to take an uncompromising look at the future prospects of such a construction, the fruit of a spirit of defiance but also of denial, and to highlight its fragilities in a world increasingly marked by climate change. The West has become aware of these vulnerabilities and has worked to stem this insatiable thirst through technological innovation or water conservation policies, but the question remains: will this be enough? 

Travelling through this hydraulic empire is an opportunity for me to explore in depth, photographically, two avenues that are dear to me: the tension that often exists, at the heart of the landscape, between the natural and the constructed; on the other hand, the ability of images to evoke - beyond the merciless presence of the present - fragments of history, in particular through traces, artefacts or other “scars" on the landscape. The use of large-scale prints - with a deliberately immersive character - was a natural choice, echoing the immensity of the spaces encountered, but also because of my desire to take full advantage of the clarity, the precision of detail, enabled by the photographic medium.
Finally, in continuity with my previous work, I have sometimes opted for aerial shots - taken at high altitude in a single-engine plane - which make it possible to reveal perspectives, space or structures that are invisible at human height, even if, inevitably, they also erase other details perceptible at ground level.

Cyril Albrecht
Translation: Louise Jablonowska 

Website: www.cyrilalbrecht.com

© Cyril ALBRECHT, serie Empire hydraulique, Edmonston Pumping Plant and California Aqueduct, California, 2019, 39 x 52 cm  / © Cyril ALBRECHT, serie Empire hydraulique, Hills, Mendocino Complex Fire, California, 2019, 148 x 197 cm / © Cyril ALBRECHT, serie Empire hydraulique, Carlsbad State Beach, California, 2020, 148 x 197 cm