Covering the news for more than half a century, William Dowell has worked on assignment in five continents. “Gift of Water,” his first solo exhibition at The SPACE, focuses on the individuals from the mountains of the Hindu Kush to the depths of the Congo and their dependence and interaction with one of the five basic elements of the universe. William’s career began in Vietnam during the war, where he started as a freelance combat cameraman for UPI Television and then signed on with NBC News. After a brief period with NBC Nightly News in Washington, DC, he moved to Paris, France, and freelanced for the next 15 years, parachuting into trouble spots in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In 1989, he signed on as a staff Middle East correspondent for Time Magazine, covering the Arab World and Iran. That was followed by a tour as Time’s Southeast Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong. After retiring from Time, he signed on as information coordinator for a rapid reaction team responding to major international disasters for CARE, the world’s largest secular international development agency. That work took him from Asia to the Horn of Africa, with a focus on water as the gift of life and at times the bearer of destruction. It is that experience, and the documentary images it produced, that allow us to delve into a world rarely seen in such a personal manner as its subjects live with the ebb and flow of the “Gift of Water”.
