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In one of the photos from the Fowler Museum's exhibit "Yangtze Remembered," a Yangtze fisherman r

In 1994, the Chinese government dreamed of building the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. It would span nearly a mile across, tower 575 feet above the world’s third-longest river, and cost approximately $24 billion dollars.

But when they acted on their idea by initiating construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the Chinese government willingly accepted the project’s additional consequences, such as the partial submersion of some of the Yangtze River’s most picturesque mountains and cities, as well as the displacement of approximately 1 million rural Chinese citizens.

Photographer Linda Butler was lucky enough to capture the first half of this construction and the land’s dramatic transformation on film. Her black-and-white photography exhibit “Yangtze Remembered: The River Beneath the Lake” will remain on display at UCLA’s Fowler Museum until Sept. 4.

“I was looking for a new project,” Butler said regarding her decision to explore China. “Usually it takes me awhile to really fall in love with something, but when I saw the Yangtze and realized the scope of the project, I thought it would be an ideal project for me, especially once I recognized its historical and political importance.”

Butler traveled back to the Yangtze River seven additional times over the course of three years to document the project. Each time, she became overwhelmed by the massive scope of the dam and the significant topographical changes of the surrounding environment.

“I have never seen an area change so quickly,” she said. “Hundreds of bridges, for instance, were built during the three years that I watched. Hundreds of miles of roads were built. Whole cities were destroyed, and people moved to towns or cities up on hillsides.”

But the construction of the dam altered more than the landscape itself. It profoundly affected the Chinese people in many ways.

“The whole structure of their lives changed,” Butler said. “Some people had to take all their belongings and move hundreds of miles away in distant provinces where they couldn’t even speak the language. It was just such an upheaval and change.”

It took the perspective of an outsider to China like Butler to collectively capture the struggle of the Yangtze’s destitute inhabitants alongside the exquisite beauty of the river. Although several of her photographs depict beautiful landscapes, others convey the region’s high level of tension and its citizens’ deep sadness and pain.

Yet the transformation has not yet reached its completion, and will not until at least 2009.

“Even though the reservoir has flooded the area, it hasn’t gone as high as it will go and so people are still being moved as we speak, and other parts of villages are still being destroyed,” Butler said. “I tried to capture the social upheaval and the environmental devastation along the river, or simple things that I found interesting, like the interior of a porter’s home, or a whole crumbling apartment building.”

Butler was struck so deeply by her experiences in China that she decided to compile a book about the Three Gorges Dam, “Yangtze Remembered,” with 101 of her photographs and an extensive text, which she wrote in order to give her readers a complete picture of the Yangtze from both visual and literary perspectives. She feels excited to be able to share her work with Los Angeles, and specifically with UCLA students and faculty, because she trusts it will resonate with them.

“I think (the Fowler Museum) was interested in the combination of the environmental issues and message of this, as well as the connection with Chinese culture and the huge Asian community in L.A. It was a good fit,” Butler said.

And even for those who aren’t familiar with the Yangtze River, Butler believes it will alter their impressions of a strong, industrial, powerful China.

“It eliminates some of the stereotypes of this megalith Chinese society that’s sort of taking over the economy of the world,’’ she said.

“Here, the people are still very rural, quite poor, and are just struggling day to day.”