Demi Stewart sits quiet and serene. A flicker passes across her face from time to time, which suggests that what she has seen and where she has been influences the pictures she takes more than she wants you to believe.
Stewart’s roots run deep in the Delta. Her mother was born and raised in Rio Vista, where Stewart would spend summers and even four of her elementary school years. She reckoned once that her family moved twenty-two times in nineteen years on account of the Air Force. But she met the man whom she would later marry while living in Rio Vista, and that fateful meeting brought her home, to Ryer Island, where she still lives. Though she and her husband divorced five years ago, she remains here. Her connection to the Delta shows in the calmness with which she strolls down the street in Isleton; in the tenor of her posts about traffic on our back roads; and in her eagerness as she talks about the rivers.
Mostly, though, that deep connection shows in Demi Stewart’s photograph of her world.
The picture-taking started five years ago. She got a job as a bridge-tender on the drawbridges of the Delta. She notes that the official name is something like “bridge operator”, but she prefers the kinder word, “tender”. She smiles. She estimates that eighty-percent of her photographs have been taken from the little houses which sit atop those bridges. She mainly works at the Mokelumne just west of Flagg City, but she knows them all — Freeport, Isleton, Steamboat, Paintersville. She ticks through the list and then explains the types of bridges, the bascule and the lift beimg the two most common in the Delta.
Stewart took the job as bridge tender five years ago because she needed the work. Whether she knew that it would draw her into the world of photography seems unclear. Stewart started posting pictures on the Delta News Facebook group. She works the early shift, and sees the sunrise from her perch over the river. She wants other people to share what she feels fortunate to see — the ever-changing patterns which shift with the merest wisp of wind; the birds; the colors. She pauses, as if unable to find words enough to explain. But she does not need words; she has her lens.
Stewart’s children recently gifted her with a professional camera. Now she keeps it readily at hand. She passes the same spots every day and yearns to capture the ever-changing scenery with its varied texture and light. The tides shift and the tone of the river evolves. She falls silent again. Then she smiles and takes a sip of her kombucha. “I’m so grateful to the people on the Delta News. They’ve been so kind to me.” She adds, “I’d like to sell my pictures. It would be an honor for someone to want my work on their walls, to look at each day.”
Stewart doesn’t feel like what she does as a photographer really comes from her. A quiet air overtakes her as she describes the experience of something grabbing her. “It doesn’t come from my eye,” she says. “It comes from my heart.” A beat skips, then she resumes. “If I’m lucky enough to capture one of the special moments, then — wow. Just, ‘wow’.” We’ve seen her pictures. We know how she feels.
Out on the street, just before parting, Stewart stands and looks at the town of Isleton. In profile, her pose evokes something noble. Just for a second, it’s easy to believe that she is of this earth in a way that transcends place and time. Then she turns, flashes a smile, and strolls away, leaving behind an undefinable and enviable sense of belonging.
Editor’s Note: Demi Stewart’s work will be featured at the Marina in a two-person show with Don Wisdom. Join us on the second Saturday in September, 14 September 2019, Noon to 4:00 p.m., for this fabulous event.
