Getting Our Feet Wet: Bringing Photography Students into the Yolo Bypass

By Eliza Gregory

. . .

The first time I heard the phrase “flood-based ecosystem,” I was in New South Wales, and I was confused.

I was on a 4000 km drive around the Murray Darling Basin, the largest watershed in Australia. I was with a group from Engineers Without Borders Australia, who luckily had an expansive idea of who would be fun to have along (shout out to Claire Dixon!), since I’m not an engineer and I’m not Australian: I’m an artist who grew up in San Francisco. We were learning about Indigenous perspectives on land and water management. And we were learning about how certain ecosystems can be broken when they’re not allowed to flood.

This was a profoundly new idea to me. In my dim awareness of ecosystems around me growing up, the words “flood” and “drought” signified catastrophe, not a healthy cycle. A flood was an event to be avoided, not a state to be desired. But now there was this new idea—some ecosystems flood regularly, and the plants and animals are adapted to not only survive that, but to rely on it.

And lo and behold, about ten years after that, I moved to the Sacramento Valley, just an hour and a half from where I grew up, into a very similar ecosystem. And I knew just enough to feel extremely curious about it, without understanding it at all.

In the years between my trip through the Murray-Darling Basin and my move to the Sacramento Valley, I made art and went to graduate school. I built up a working method centered on collaboration and experiential research. And I worked on figuring out how to foster and participate in a dialogue about relationships to land.

Now, in the 2025-26 school year, I’ve had the pleasure of working with 25 college seniors in the BFA (Bachelor’s in Fine Arts) Photography Program at Sacramento State University to investigate the rhythms and restoration processes going on within the Yolo Bypass. In a mixture of environmental education, experiential learning, art-making, and storytelling, the students and I have explored the Yolo Bypass under the guidance of John Brennan and Carson Jeffres. They coordinated four field trips, to different parts of the Bypass, so that we could see salmon habitat restoration projects at various stages of development. These projects find ways to get water back onto the land—ways to let the land flood again, while maintaining the agriculture and urban areas within the floodplain. And now the work we made in response to that research is on display at the Crocker Museum through April 12^th. (With a party on March 12^th, 6-9 pm called Art Mix: Marsh Madness).

flyer for the Crocker Art Museum's exhibition "Placeholder: Flooding Fields". It is showcased at the Crocker Student and Community Gallery. Open: March 5 - April 12, 2026. The Marsh Madness Reception is March 12 from 6pm-9pm. The work is by Sac State Photo and Lorena Molina's San Francisco State social practice class, in collaboration with Eliza Gregory.

The Big Notch Project, at the Fremont Weir was a focal point. When we visited, it was being tested. Now water and salmon are flowing through it for the first time. We also looked at Knagg’s Ranch, Tide’s End, the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, and LEBLS,the Lower Elkhorn Basin Levee Setback.

We got to hear from farmers (Ammy Reyes, Garth Williams), a streamkeeper (Max Stevenson, for the Solano County Water Agency) and government officials (Sheila Allen, Yolo County Supervisor; Liz Vasquez, Program Manager for the Department of Water Resources; and Meghan Hertel, the Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.) Carson Jeffres and Jacob Katz were our “fish people.” John Brennan helped us begin to map the political and physical landscapes surrounding us. Some of my favorite quotations from John were “No one can get an ‘A.’ No one can come into a restoration project and get everything they want. But if everybody gets a C or a D on these restoration projects, they can go forward” (meaning compromise is real and it hurts, but it’s also amazing when it happens) and “Once you get it moving, you can steer it, but if you’re not moving, it doesn’t matter if you turn the wheel,” (meaning the project has to start in order for it to be refined).

Words that kept coming up were abundance, biodiversity, and density of life. The more I learned about the flood-based ecosystem of the Sacramento Valley, the more awestruck I felt at what this place must have been like before the water got routed out of the floodplain.

I certainly feel a sense of loss when I think about this landscape. But I also feel a sense of hope. The habitat restoration projects happening now—where everyone is getting a C, but things are moving forward—are remarkable accomplishments. They represent years and years of work, of research, of listening, of coalition-building, of policy-making. They show how ideas can change, how communities can learn, how new approaches can take hold.

Last year, my students and I got to explore Sutter’s Fort and the State Indian Museum and the land those institutions occupy. We spoke with contemporary Native artists, Tribal Ecological Knowledge Holders, and State Parks employees. This year, we ventured out into the Yolo Bypass to hear from farmers and fish ecologists. Remarkable things are happening in this region, in terms of the evolution of the stories we are telling ourselves about where we live and what has happened here. The Big Notch has opened, and I’ve watched the water flow through.

Come join us for [Placeholder: Flooding Fields] in the Crocker Art Museum Student and Community Gallery from March 5^th-April 12^th, 2026.

Marsh Madness Reception:
Thursday, March 12^th, 6-9 pm
216 O St, Sacramento, CA

Images from the project will also be on display at the CNRA building lobby in downtown Sacramento throughout the month of March. The slideshows run from 8-9 am, 11am-2pm, and 4-5 pm every day.  715 P St, Sacramento, CA 95814