Dreaming California: High End, Low End, No End in Sight

Dreaming California spans twelve years of color photographs made in Southern California and is the sequel to Susan Ressler’s 2018 monograph Executive Order: Images of 1970s Corporate America (Daylight, 2018). Once again, Ressler is looking at power relationships: the haves and have nots, political unrest, injustice and inequity; not only in the Golden State (California) but the US, and by implication, the world at large.

Susan Ressler is a renowned artist, author, and educator who has been making social documentary photographs for nearly fifty years. Her work is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library and Archives Canada, and many other important collections. Ressler developed one of the first online courses and web archives about women artists at Purdue University, where she was Head of the Photography Area and taught photographic practice, theory, and history in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts from 1981 to 2004. She is currently Professor Emerita, Purdue University.