Krista Schyler

Incorporating seven years of photography and research, River of Redemption portrays life along the Anacostia River, a Washington, DC, waterway rich in history and biodiversity that has nonetheless lingered for years in obscurity and neglect in our nation's capital, earning it the nickname: the forgotten river.
Inspired by Aldo Leopold's classic book, A Sand County Almanac, River of Redemption is written in almanac style, evoking a consciousness of time and place, taking readers through the seasons in the watershed as well as through the river's complex history and ecology. Seventy years ago, when Leopold was writing his prophetic essays in Sand County Wisconsin, the culmination of all his fears was unfolding on the banks of the Anacostia River in Washington DC. The river's ecological fabric had already been torn from every possible angle. It had been channeled, walled, deforested and dumped on. While Leopold was writing about the meadow mice and oak trees of Sand County, the National Park Service was lending out the banks of the Anacostia as a dumping grounds for the refuse of the nation's capital. That garbage was burned every afternoon in one of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods. On the banks of the Anacostia came the violent collision of colossal failures in ecology and justice- all brought to a painful nadir in 1968 with the death of a small boy named Kelvin.
River of Redemption is both a chronicle of the worst humanity can do to the natural landscape and a wellspring of memory and hope offering a roadmap back to health and well-being for Anacostia residents and the wider Chesapeake Bay watershed.