The Same River Twice

The Same River Twice transformed a forlorn space in the center of Downtown Milwaukee every night between August 30, 2024 and February 28, 2025. The photographs that made up its slow upwelling of image were made at the Milwaukee River a block away. The images explored the surface and depths of the river, arresting its flow to consider the ways that sun, sky, clouds, wind, current, and reflections of the buildings that line the river all interact in a particular instant.

The Same River Twice did not have a conventional soundtrack to go with the images. It was conceived as a silent film. However, in this Wisconsin Ave version, there was occasional music. Four times a month during the run, a musician appeared and improvised to them on his melodeon.

Dick Blau, Professor Emeritus and Co-Founder of the UW-M Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres, has a BA from Harvard in English and a PhD from Yale in American Studies. He is the author of six photo books and numerous films on subjects ranging from interpersonal family dynamics to the music and culture of the Roma of northern Greece. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as, locally, the Museum of Wisconsin Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum.