Before the Water Rose

You Are Invited

In the fall of 1956, twenty-three-year-old photographer Richard Stefani traveled to Celilo Falls on the Columbia River.

He carried two cameras and two rolls of color film.

What he photographed was a place still fully alive: fishermen working above the rushing Columbia, families and young people gathered along the river, wooden platforms extending over the falls, and individual faces observed with the sensitivity that would later define his career as a master portrait photographer.

Only months later, the falls were submerged beneath the reservoir created by The Dalles Dam.

Nearly seventy years later, Richard Stefani's photographs are being brought together in Before the Water Rose: Celilo Falls, 1956.

We invite you to join us for their presentation.

Why This Presentation Matters

A Remarkable Record. A Living History.

Before the Water Rose brings together Richard Stefani's surviving color photographs from his 1956 visit to Celilo Falls.

The presentation is not intended to recreate a world that has disappeared. Celilo remains a place of profound living cultural significance, and the relationships of Columbia River communities to the river continue.

Instead, these photographs offer something quieter: the opportunity to look carefully at a particular place and its people at a particular moment in time.

The original negatives have been newly scanned and the exhibition prepared with close attention to Richard's photographic intent and the responsibility of caring for his archive.

This presentation also marks the public beginning of House of Stefani.

For us, there could be no more meaningful place to begin.