Mimi Plumb: The Reservoir
Nazraeli Press is proud to announce the release of The Reservoir, the latest photobook by acclaimed American photographer Mimi Plumb. Created between 2021 and 2023, the series documents life around two reservoirs in California’s Central Valley, during the grip of a twenty-three-year megadrought.
Plumb’s powerful images capture a complex and poetic interplay between leisure and environmental crisis. Families arrive in search of escape—carrying coolers, umbrellas, inflatables, strollers, and pets—only to find the water receding further with each passing week. At times, wildfire smoke veils the sky, reinforcing the uneasy tension that defines the American West.
“The Reservoir continues my exploration of how drought, climate change, and an underlying sense of anxiety shape the experience of living in this region,” says Plumb. “The landscapes are stark, the people resilient, and the light—unforgiving and transcendent.”
The Reservoir is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on displacement, perseverance, and the fragile line between the natural and human worlds. The book features 41 duotone plates and is presented in a large-format hardcover edition.
Mimi Plumb is a leading voice in socially engaged photography with a longstanding focus on California and the American West. In 2022, she received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for this body of work. Her photographs are held in major public collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, LACMA, and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Plumb will be the subject of a major solo exhibition organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, opening in 2026.
A limited edition of 100 signed and numbered copies, presented in a custom-made slipcase, is available exclusively through Nazraeli Press.
About the Author
Mimi Plumb belongs to a distinguished lineage of photographers whose work critically engages with social and environmental issues in California and the American West. In 2022, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her ongoing photographic series, The Reservoir.
Her most recent monograph, Lookout on Highway 74, was published by Nazraeli Press. Plumb first gained widespread attention with Landfall (TBW Books, 2018), a haunting visual meditation on 1980s America that channels the era’s unease and apocalyptic undertones. The book was shortlisted for both the 2019 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award and the Lucie Photo Book Prize.
Her second publication, The White Sky (Stanley/Barker, 2020), draws on photographs from her suburban adolescence in the 1970s, offering a personal yet quietly political narrative. In The Golden City (Stanley/Barker, 2022), Plumb turns her lens on San Francisco, compiling images taken between 1984 and 2000 that reflect her deep engagement with the city and its changing cultural fabric. Her 2023 release, Megalith-Still (Stanley/Barker), portrays a group of wild horses living in the John Muir Wilderness, a project that spans a decade of work from 1995 to 2005.
Beyond the Guggenheim, Plumb’s work has been supported by numerous honors, including the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship (2017), a California Humanities grant (2015), the California Arts Council Individual Artist Grant (1989), the James D. Phelan Award in Photography (1986), and a Marin Arts Council Grant (1999).
A major solo exhibition of her work will be presented by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2026. Her photographs are held in major public and private collections, including the High Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Collection Deutsche Börse (Germany), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pier 24 Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Plumb earned both her BFA (1976) and MFA (1986) in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has taught extensively, holding faculty positions at institutions such as SFAI, San Jose State University, Stanford University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently resides in Berkeley, California.
