Cityscape nominee

In 1870, Bodie was one of the largest communities in California, with a population comparable to that of Los Angeles of that time. The promise of striking rich drew people to this lawless gold-mining camp, despite an uncertain and often precarious lifestyle. Only a few decades later, opportunities evaporated, and its denizens hastily abandoned the site, their belongings, and their dreams.

One hundred years later, Bodie was reborn as a Historic State Park, and its resident rangers were tasked with preserving the ghost town in a state of “arrested decay”—turning an inherently temporary mining camp into a permanent relic of American history.

Reflecting on Time uses window reflections captured in-camera from Bodie’s frail surviving buildings as a metaphor for reflecting on the paradox of impermanence frozen in time.

Now based in Los Angeles and California’s Sierra Nevada, Dotan was born in Israel as the son and grandson of holocaust survivors. He grew up in a modest Parisian suburb and moved to the US as a young adult. After a 20 year career in high-tech Dotan retrained as a documentary photographer. He attended the Eddie Adams Workshop, the Missouri Photo Workshop and studied photojournalism at Santa Monica College.

Dotan's photographs have been published by National Geographic,  The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, etc. and have been prominently showcased in Leica’s 2021 worldwide branding campaign. Dotan is a Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 laureate (2017). He teaches for Leica Akademie, Momenta Workshops and is a frequent lecturer at the B&H Event Space.

Dotan has published two monographs: Venice Beach, Kehrer Verlag 2018 and Nowhere to Go but Everywhere, Kehrer Verlag, 2020.